New Orleans World Premiere – MÖNSTER OUTSIDE – SBDNY
“Bell’s company is regularly in demand throughout the world, and critics are more and more frequently identifying her as one of the most intriguing and significant choreographic voices of her generation.” – Creative Loafing Atlanta
MÖNSTER OUTSIDE – World Premiere
Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans
November 17 & 18, 2017
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Contact: Sarah Nielsen at sarah.nielsen@npafe.org or 202.643.8048
In MÖNSTER OUTSIDE, Sidra Bell Dance New York (SBDNY) has joined forces with innovative Swedish composer Per Störby and his critically acclaimed chamber ensemble New Tide Orquesta, and Sweden’s Visual Relief (projection mapping), to develop a flexibly voyeuristic discourse about the nature of outliers in contemporary society. Two acts marry dance theater, chamber music, projection mapping, vocal scoring, and scenic and lighting design. The work will locate and depict aspects of human joy and despair via the experience of the “outsider”.
The title MÖNSTER OUTSIDE is a play on Swedish-English cognate irregularities; in Swedish, ‘mönster’ translates as ‘patterns’. This work will engage live audiences in the process of deconstructing social structures that create outsiders in our society, looking at outsiders as those that live and operate outside of the norm. It comments on nature and its relationship to the pursuit of technology that causes dissonance and detachment from humanity.
Onstage, the work will use a theatrical interplay of movement and sound patterns between Sidra Bell Dance New York and New Tide Orquesta, veering between playful and disturbing narrated by experimental vocalization. The piece will be performed in a multitiered stage arena of moving parts and screen filters designed by the dynamic design team Amith Chandrashaker and Amy Rubin, that marries highly technical movement with eclectic sound worlds.
MÖNSTER OUTSIDE will depict themes of human alienation in technologically driven culture, isolation, youth culture, identity and gender politics, rage, and the search for intimacy and inclusivity in constantly shifting contemporary life.
MÖNSTER OUTSIDE is made possible by New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Production Award & Musikverket
Additional Residency Support: Vara Concert Hall (Vara, Sweden), SITE Sweden (Stockholm), Baruch Performing Arts Center, PearlArts Studios PearlDiving Movement Residency, Alonzo King LINES Ballet School Training Program, New Jersey Dance Theatre Ensemble, Silo Kirkland Farm, CUNY Dance Initiative, Lehman College
Stakeholders: Anna Thompson/Taylor Knight (slowdanger), Garfield Lemonious, Tony & Kevin Brewer, The Mallaney Family, Dennis & Claudette Bell, Gregory Dawson, Turtle Brennen, Kayla Brannigan, Francesca Butler, Matisse Maitland, The Crawford Family, The Clark-Schoeb Family, The Abarbanell Family
Sidra Bell Dance New York – Company
“More than a choreographer, a creator of scenic worlds. [Sidra] unites the presence and the behavior of the dancers, the text, the sound design and the choreography in a dazzling stream of forces.” -Bulgarian Theater Critic- Elena Angelova
Sidra Bell is the mastermind behind contemporary dance company Sidra Bell Dance New York (SBDNY), a boutique brand of prolific movement illustrators based in New York City that presents and fosters innovative and progressive dance theater in a world of ideas. SBDNY is rapidly gaining an international profile for work that reveals aspects of the human condition through a distinctly female lens. Bell’s process is intuitive, collaborative, and emphasizes the integration of multiple design elements into a singular vision of contemporary dance.
Sidra Bell has won several awards, notably a 1st Prize for Choreography at the Solo Tanz Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany in 2011 for Grief Point. and a 2015 National Dance Project Production Award from the New England Foundation for the Arts. The latter of which is presenting the world premiere of SBDNY’s Mönster Outside in New Orleans, November 2017 in collaboration with Sweden’s New Tide Orquesta and Visual Relief.
SBDNY’s work has been seen throughout the United States and in Denmark, France, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, China, Canada, Aruba, Korea, Brazil, and Greece. The company was lauded as #1 in Contemporary Dance by the Pittsburgh Examiner in 2014 for garment, in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s 2010 Best in Dance for ReVUE, and in the 2012 Year in Review in ArtsATL’s notable performances for Nudity.
