BridgmanPacker Dance will perform in the Proscenium Theater, located in SUNY Potsdam Performing Art Center, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. This concert is free, and the public is welcome to attend.
SUNY Potsdam’s Department of Theatre and Dance will welcome the New York City-based BridgmanPacker Dance in concert for one evening only during an upcoming visit.
BridgmanPacker Dance will perform in the Proscenium Theater, located in SUNY Potsdam Performing Art Center, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. This concert is free, and the public is welcome to attend. BridgmanPacker will present “Voyeur,” their highly acclaimed work that received a 2017 New York Dance and Performance Award (The Bessies). In “Voyeur,” dance meets film meets virtual reality.
“Voyeur” will be paired with the duo's “Table Bed Mirror,” the latest in BridgmanPacker Dance's genre-breaking integration of dance and video. This new work navigates through an illogical and fantastical night, following two people who are having the same dream. While galloping through constantly shifting realities, the work references the neuroscience of the dream process and contrasts dreams' most ridiculously commonplace details, with the expansive and outrageous. Live performance, video, text and sound score create an absurdist collage that intends to confound the sense of reality and flip assumptions upside down.
The dance group will also offer a free artist talk the day before the show, on Tuesday, Feb. 5, at 5 p.m., in the Proscenium Theater. Choreographer/performers Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer will explain their choreographic process and its integration with video technology. They will describe the history and development of their unique concept of video partnering, demonstrating their use of green screen technology, video editing and a live camera stage set-up.
Bridgman and Packer’s innovative work features their “video partnering”— the integration of live performance and video technology. “Voyeur” is inspired by artist Edward Hopper’s world of color, light, perspective and under-the-surface eroticism. Fragmented moments of private lives are witnessed through windows and doorways. As the performers merge and collide with the video imagery, the presence of a seen or unseen viewer lies at the heart of “Voyeur.” A video trailer of the work can be seen at https://vimeo.com/185071587.
SUNY Potsdam alumnus and BridgmanPacker Dance Lighting Designer and Production Designer Frank DenDanto III '91 will also be coming to campus to share his years of experience with students, faculty and staff during two lectures at the Proscenium Theater on Monday, Feb. 4 at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. DenDanto has been the lighting designer and production designer for BridgmanPacker Dance for more than 20 years.
Admission is free. To reserve free seats in advance, contact the Community Performance Series Box Office, located in the Performing Arts Center lobby, by calling (315) 267-2277. Tickets will also be available at the door, beginning one hour before show time. For more information about this performance, please call (315) 267-2556.
About the performers:
Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, the co-artistic directors of BridgmanPacker Dance, have collaborated as performers and choreographers since 1978. They have been awarded the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the National Dance Project Touring Award, the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts.
BridgmanPacker Dance has toured throughout the U.S., performing at festivals and art centers, including Spoleto Festival USA, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Florida Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, ICA Boston, Dance St. Louis and Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center. They have appeared abroad in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Central America, in festivals including the Beirut Spring Festival, Munich International Dance Festival (Germany), Festival Internacional de Artes Escenicas (Panama), Kintetsu Theater (Osaka, Japan), Festival Internacional Chihuahua (Mexico), New Baltic Dance Festival (Lithuania) and Tancforum (Budapest).
This performance is made possible with funds from the NYS DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
From directing, choreographing, acting and dancing, to designing and technical work, theatre and dance are highly collaborative art forms at SUNY Potsdam. Students and professionals engage in creative problem solving, requiring the setting and meeting of long-term goals, and the analysis and understanding of movement and dramatic literature. For more information about SUNY Potsdam’s Department of Theatre and Dance, visit www.potsdam.edu/theatre.
Founded in 1816, The State University of New York at Potsdam is one of only three arts campuses in the entire SUNY system. SUNY Potsdam’s arts curriculum offers the full palette: music, theatre, dance, fine arts and creative writing. No matter the discipline, people from all backgrounds can find their creative compass at Potsdam, with myriad arts immersion experiences available for both campus and community.
Arts & Culture