LENORE, BY ANGIE SMALIS & COLIN GEE

Thurs 10 Nov, 8pm
Tickets €10.00/€8.00

Exploring the individual’s struggle against change, contemporary dancer Angie Smalis and performance artist Colin Gee use humour, narrative and persona to present this fascinating dance-drama based on the poem Lenore (1774) by Gottfried Bürger, also drawing on the Dutch still life tradition of vanitas (symbolic works of art).

In the original poem the title character awaits her beloved, William, on his return from war. He doesn’t appear, she curses God, and later that evening, “William” knocks on the door. Promising marriage he takes Lenore away by horseback, to the graveyard, where he reveals himself to be Death.

Angie Smalis, a Greek contemporary dance artist based in Limerick, explains: “Lenore tells a circular tale about expectations in which a series of ordinary objects, remade as sculptures, lead her to imagine the circumstances she feels they’ve promised her. The character Lenore, with her husband William, is led by each object through a fable-like pursuit of reflections, almost to the death, before escaping reluctantly back to the same moment where they began, to begin again.

Lenore continues my collaborative work with American artist Colin Gee and our study of morality tales, using performance techniques developed together over the last three years, exploring the use of performance persona to understand narrative expectations in dance. Lenore results in one evening-length performance, as well as a video series”.

Colin Gee, a New York based performing artist, says: “Lenore is a dance-drama, using humour, narrative, and persona, as well as dance, to explore how objects relate to our own impermanence, and our struggle against change. It’s based on the poem ‘Lenore’, a “Death and the Maiden” tale by Gottfried Bürger… “Lenore” looks at how expectations are associated with specific everyday objects. The performance draws from the 17th century Dutch still life pictorial tradition of “Vanitas” – each object proposes a future by representing something she longs for and feels due, however unlikely”.

Original music has been composed for Lenore by Irish composer Jennifer Walshe, “the most original compositional voice to emerge in Ireland in the last 20 years” (The Irish Times).

Funded by The Arts Council and supported by Limerick City and County Council, Dance Limerick and Belltable.

About Angie Smalis
Angie trained and worked professionally as a dance artist in Athens, Greece before moving to Vienna, Austria (2001) to join the Viennese Opera (Volks Oper Wien), and then relocated to Limerick in 2003 to join Daghdha Dance Company. Angie is an independent contemporary dance artist, leads Limerick Youth Dance, is Artistic Director of Limerick Youth Theatre, and Founder and Director of Patterns Dance Collective, a group of dance artists with intellectual disabilities. Her collaborative video installation Chaplet of Roses (2015) won Outstanding Irish Work at Light Moves Festival of screen dance 2015 (Limerick). Recent works include The Melody of Thinking (2016), a collaboration with musician Peter Hanagan, presented at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL; Specifically. Being. Human. (2016), a collaboration with actor/director Kevin Kiely Jnr and composer Paddy Mulcahy, and a dance response to E.gress (2016) a film about dementia that launched at IMMA in November, as part of a national tour by visual artist Marie Brett. Angie would like to acknowledge the continuous support of the Arts Council under the Dance Bursary, Dance Project and Travel and Training Awards, Culture Ireland, Limerick City and County Council Arts Office, Dance Limerick, Manuel Smalis and her 5 children.

About Colin Gee
Colin trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and the Dell’ Arte School of Physical Theater, and was a clown for Cirque du Soleil and the founding Whitney Live artist-in-residence at the Whitney Museum. Recipient of a 2012 Rome Prize in Design, and a 2011 EMPAC Dance Movies Commission, other commissions have included works for SFMOMA and the Whitney Museum. He has frequently collaborated with composer Erin Gee (his sister), providing the libretto for her opera, “SLEEP” (2009, Zürich Opera House), “Mouthpiece XIII, Mathilde of Loci, Part I” (2009, American Composer’s Orchestra, Carnegie Hall), “Mouthpiece XX” (2014, Vienna Konzerthaus) with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and “Mouthpiece VI+I” (2014, Chicago) with Fonema Consort. In the last three of those works he also performed, and contributed video and direction. Works in New York have been premiered at PS122, The Chocolate Factory, Joyce Theater, Whitney Museum and many others. He has collaborated with Angie Smalis on dance and video projects since 2007, most recently on the dance works “Chaplet of Roses,” and “They Go Out in Joy.”

About Jennifer Walshe
“The most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years” (The Irish Times) and “Wild girl of Darmstadt” (Frankfurter Rundschau), composer and performer Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin. Her music has been commissioned, broadcast and performed all over the world. She has been the recipient of fellowships and prizes from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York; the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm, the Internationales Musikinstitut, Darmstadt and Akademie Schloss Solitude among others. Walshe has written a number of operas and theatrical works, including XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!! an opera for Barbie dolls, available on DVD from Mere Records and most recently Die Taktik, a commission for the Junge Oper Stuttgart, which completed a month-long run in Stuttgart in 2012. Her visual work has been exhibited most recently in the Chelsea Art Museum, New York; Project Arts Centre, Dublin and the ICA, London.