Sayonara, Dear is an elegantly eccentric dance/video drama by PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER reflecting on states of being at the edges of existence. Through continually shifting kinetic designs drawn from silent movies as well as from the orientalist strains in early modern dance, images of endless loss and longing are layered with Ms. Pearson's new monologue of her 88-year old mother's sexual attraction to her male caregiver. Jamie James Wenger’s Japanese chiyogami video (designed in collaboration with Pearson and Widrig) sets a vivid environment for the choreography, intensifying the exploration of what is hidden and what is revealed. www.pearsonwidrig.org
Drama, a dance of long-legged awkward elegance, arresting in its otherworldly logic, moves along an abstract narrative of continually realigning expectations. Conceived and Directed by: Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig Movement Palette inspired by: Tzveta Kassabova Created with and Performed by: Tzveta Kassabova, Betty Skeen, and Erin Lehua Brown, with UMD dancers Michelle Chia, Christina Jackson, Alex Odenwald, Natasha Pcholkina, Veronica Rico, Candace Scarborough, Emily Schwarz Opera Singer: Madeline Miskie Soundscore by: Lauren Burke Scenic design conceived by: Sali Treek with Ann Chismar, Erin Glasspatrick, and Ryan Knapp Costume Design by: Tzveta Kassabova Lighting Design by: Ariel Benjamin
Be Still, My Heart is a duet of timeless connection at the edge of separation where both hurt and great love reside. Tzveta Kassabova and Raja Feather Kelly create an alchemy that at times is impossibly challenging, at others impossibly simple: intimate, brave, hungry, naked. Choreographed and Directed by Sara Pearson Created with and Performed by Tzveta Kassabova and Raja Feather Kelly Original Music by Michael Wall Costume Design by Robert Croghan Lighting Design by Jane Chan Premiere: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, College Park, MD, December 2012
This video is about Ja!Ja!Ja!
This video is about ACI Middlebury (excerpt)
In "Alpsegen", Widrig takes a critical look at his native Switzerland’s role during WWII, how it was trying to balance its desire to appear neutral and benevolent with its inherent protectionism. www.pearsonwidrig.org
Unmoored (Love Letters to New Orleans), PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER’s full-evening live documentary of dance, spoken word, video and fabulous New Orleans music, was created in New Orleans shortly after Katrina, premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2006 and has toured the country since then, inviting relocated and displaced gulf coast residents to participate in workshops, video portrait sessions and the performing cast. "Heart-wrenching and wryly humorous” (The Washington Post) www.pearsonwidrig.org
PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride is a multi-disciplinary community-based dance theater work in which people remember, explore, and question pivotal moments of change in their lives. www.pearsonwidrig.org
Oashisu (Oasis) is what happened while reuniting with each other after a rough year, when all were in need of a vacation from themselves and ready to connect to a place as free of habit as possible. The Japanese concepts of "ma" (a creative space in which the essence of artistic relationships are made tangible) and "kansha" (simultaneous gratitude and appreciation) provided the framework for this work of tectonic shifts, seismic surprises, and deep calm. Conceived and Choreographed by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig Created with and Performed by Graham Brown, Lindsay Gilmour, Tzveta Kassabova, Betty Skeen, Patrik Widrig Original Music Composed by James Nyoraku Schlefer Music Performed live by Masayo Ishigure, Sean Katsuyama, Tigger Benford, James Nyoraku Schlefer Premiered at Tenri Cultural Institute in New York City in October 2010
PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER Conceived and Directed by Sara Pearson Choreographed and Performed by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig “It’s like a bundle of bright scraps of this and that they untie and spread out like peddlers. They dance together- often on the floor, as if all dances began and ended in bed.” The Village Voice www.pearsonwidrig.org
In this edgy evening-length dance/theater/salt epic by PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER, Lot’s Wife finally confronts God in her 1950’s Brooklyn kitchen where she looks back again and again. With great humor and compassion, The Return of Lot’s Wife examines the larger questions of human nature, weaving choreographed images, heartbreakingly funny monologues, original music, and the poetry of 14th Century Persian mystic Hafiz. This poignant sequel to the Old Testament tale has wowed audiences with its breathtaking finale featuring dancers swathed in swirling arcs of salt and light. www.pearsonwidrig.org
Rich in humor and full of questions perhaps too profound to ask, Take Me With You is an exploration of impending loss in the midst of longing for the Beloved. And then there's the blue shark, which may carry different Rorschachs of interpretation, whether one leans towards a Freudian or Jungian iconography. A 35-minute dance/spoken word poem, the trio's singular performance with a stunning score by composer Michael Wall brings one back to the precipice of the present time and time again. TAKE ME WITH YOU RECEIVED A 2013 DANCE METRO DC AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING OVERALL PRODUCTION IN A LARGE VENUE Choreographed and Directed by Sara Pearson Created with and Performed by Raja Feather Kelly, Connor Voss, Patrik Widrig Original Music by Michael Wall Scenic Design by Sali Treek Costumes by Robert Croghan Lighting by Paul D. Jackson
This video is about Paradise Pond (excerpt)
A Curious Invasion/Conn Coll is a site-adaptive performance installation with members of PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER and a Connecticut College student and faculty cast. Original live music by Japanese-Peruvian composer/violinist Pauchi Sasaki and David Dorfman Performed in New London, CT, May 2011
PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's multi-sensory choreographic installation for 8-88 performers, 24 haystacks, 10 fans, 5 sprinklers, 4 TV/VCR’s, and 2,000 ice cubes, creates images full of mystery and humor. Elizabeth Zimmer of the Village Voice writes, "In over a decade of watching Wave Hill events, I’ve never had such a good time. It really was perfect." www.pearsonwidrig.org
In Dr. Pearson..., Sara remembers losing it, him, her, that! “A true comedienne - pithy, winsome, and able to deliver with right-on timing.” Dance Magazine www.pearsonwidrig.org
In Heimweh (homesick), Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig are catapulted against themselves and each other as the internalized forces of Catholicism and family traditions reign supreme. “How much they - and we, too - relish the immediacy of any destructiveness we can wreak short of the fatal.” The Village Voice www.pearsonwidrig.org
PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's Muezzin explores choreographically and musically the following questions: What is prayer? What does it mean to call? And whom are we calling - ourselves, another, and more specifically, what part of oneself are we calling out to? Choreography and Dancing by Patrik Widrig Music Composed and Performed by Philip Hamilton www.pearsonwidrig.org
Ordinary Festivals is PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's work for 300 oranges, 6-16 performers, and 2 knives that “pushes the rituals of a traditional community over the edge into mysterious, subversive, and often funny acts.” (The Village Voice) and has been seen by over 20,000 people throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Premiered at P.S.122 in New York City, April 1995 www.pearsonwidrig.org
Kré, Kré, Kré explores the act of creativity itself, that "yes" when body, mind, and heart are alive and in a heightened state of awareness and mystery. The work emanates from the creative voice of each dancer’s unique musicality and sensibility. Created anew for each ensemble, the work was originally commissioned by the Daejeon City Dance Company in South Korea in 2009, re-choreographed for the Maryland Dance Ensemble in 2010, and will have its next incarnation with a local company on a tour through Switzerland in 2012. Choreography by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig Created with and Performed by UMD student company Music by Uh Uh Boo
Thaw, PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's 60-minute ice/light/video dance, is an unlikely symphonic investigation of elemental encounters under increasingly curious circumstances. Inspired by the first crack of winter ice breaking up on a frozen shore, Thaw “suggests a desire to shatter surfaces and release the vital reality trapped within.” (Eva Yaa Asantewa, Village Voice critic) Rich in violent beauty and deep quiet, Thaw evolves into a kinetic poem, a love letter to time. Videos created by Patrik Widrig from documentary film footage of Shackleton's 1914 Antarctica voyage and the last ice harvests in Maine. Premiered at the Duke Theater, New York City, 2005 www.pearsonwidrig.org
Do You Remember? is movement memoir of dislocation, immigration and emigration depicted through the chilling words of Chilean choreographer/dancer Marcela Ortiz de Zarate and a succession of emotionally charged, full-bodied dances on a set of oversized wooden crates, this is a collaboration between three Latino choreographers/dancers and PWDT. Conceived and Choreographed by Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig Created with and Performed by Rodrigo Esteva, Jaime Ortega, Marcela Ortiz de Zarate, Sara Pearson, Lisa Race, Patrik Widrig and Gerardo Delgado Music by Los Panchos, Airto Moreira, The Tallis Scholars, Brent Lewis, Sara Pearson Text written and performed by Marcela Ortiz de Zarate Broughton Set by Carlo Adinolfi Costumes by Amy Downs Lighting by Tony Giovannetti Premiere - Dance Theater Workshop, New York City, January 1994 Funding for Do You Remember? was provided by a generous grant from the Rockefeller/US-Mexico Fund for Culture (administered by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bancomer Cultural Foundation and Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Harkness Foundation.
PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER's HereAfter explores people’s relationship to life and death and what comes next, to beginnings and endings — of a life, a relationship, a job, a building, a passion. “It’s like seeing both the raging grief and sharp, glittering newness of death." The Washington Post “A tough-tender dance, staged with wise theatricality." The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY “The phenomenon of life and death was performed with breathtaking vitality and energy.” Der Toggenburger, Switzerland www.pearsonwidrig.org