Be Still, My Heart
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.
2012 Stan Barouh
Choreographed and Directed by • Sara Pearson
Created with and Performed by • Tzveta Kassabova, 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
Tour Highlights • Kennedy Center Millennium Stage
Funding • UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies • Jon Wiener • Friends of PWDT
Sayonara, Dear
Sayonara, Dear is an elegantly eccentric dance/video drama 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.
Choreography, Text, Performance, Set Design - Sara Pearson, Patrik Widrig
Original Sound Score - Karinne Keithley
Video Design - Jamie James Wenger, in collaboration with Sara Pearson & Patrik Widrig
Costume Design by - Tzveta Kassabova
Preview - The Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, New York City, April 10-12, 2008
Funding Credits - Created and performed with the generous support provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Harkness and Sequoia Foundations, Jon Wiener, and the Friends of PWDT.
“Daredevils of the Heart.”
Partners Who Touch, Partners Who Don't Touch
A duet about the dynamics of connection and separation; the meeting of two cultures, two languages, two people, dance and performance art, silence and speech, aggression and tenderness.
Music by Chopin, Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, The Heavenly Gospel Singers, Jimmy McHugh
Premiere - Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, January 1988
Tour Highlights - Joyce Theater • Rote Fabrik/Switzerland • Stadttheater St. Gallen/Switzerland • Belluard Bollwerk Festival/Switzerland • XI Festival Internacional de Danza/Peru • Kyoto Arts Center/Japan • Chang Mu Arts Center/South Korea • Darpana Academy/India • Teatro Firkas/Greece • P.S. 122/New York City • Bates Dance Festival •Posthof International Festival/Austria
“They dance together as if all dances began and ended in bed.”
Heimweh (Homesick)
In Heimweh (homesick) they are catapulted against themselves and each other as the internalized forces of Catholicism and family traditions reign supreme.
Music by Odetta, Ambrosian Junior Choir, Public Enemy, Louis Armstrong, James Brown
Premiere - Swiss Dance Festival, May 1989
Tour Highlights - Rote Fabrik, Switzerland • Stadttheater St. Gallen, Switzerland • Belluard Bollwerk Festival, Switzerland • Chang Mu Arts Center, South Korea • Darpana Academy, Ahmedabad, India • Teatro Firkas, Crete, Greece • P.S. 122, New York City • Bates Dance Festival • Posthof International Festival/Austria
Commissioned by the Swiss Insitute
“How much they - and we, too - relish the immediacy of any destructiveness we can wreak short of the fatal.”
Journal Entries
“Details journeys across landscapes literal and psychic. It seems to be exploring every avenue of a new neighborhood, the common places and the strange.” The Village Voice
Choreography, Text, Performance by Sara Pearson + Patrik Widrig
Premiere - ChoreoSpace / Nikolais Louis Foundation, New York City, 1987
Tour Highlights - Mayfest International Festival, Glasgow, Scotland • Dance Theater Workshop, NYC • Rutgers University • Teatro Firkas, Crete, Greece
“Terrific comedy, unassuming, hilariously earnest and poignant.”