Events

Protecting Complexity with the Star Pû Method

Event Overview

Dates

December 5, 2021

Hours

5 PM

Location

Hearst Dance Theater, Lewis Arts complex

Admission

FREE tickets required; Open to University community

Star Pû Method is a dance-theater technique and corresponding theater work created by Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ), a 2021-22 Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at the Lewis Center for the Arts. LVJ’s professional dance company, LVJ Performance Co., will share an in-progress excerpt of their current work that will premiere at The Chocolate Factory Theater in New York City, June 2022. Protecting Complexity with the Star Pû Method reveals the multiplicity of the cast members’ approaches to movement and performance, as well as their varied histories. With healing as a core facet through movement, breath, communal connection and vocal sound, LVJ asks whether the performance encounter provides a space that makes healing actually possible. With an openness to the lessons accrued by failure, the Star Pû Method makes any attempt at healing a form of blessing.

Also on December 5 at 1 p.m., Princeton dance students will perform Star Pû Method ~ Care, Freedom and Partnership improvising movement, vocal sound, song and spoken words based on a core premise of self and community care. Through embracing failure along with success, this work explores the vast spectrum between being a “star” onstage and the comedy, vulnerability and humanity of the dancer. This longer, studio version of the Princeton Dance Festival performance of this work is meant to achieve greater intimacy with the audience and the cast members. The event is followed by a discussion with the cast and LVJ Performance Co. members.

These two works share core principles yet are expressed in a completely different way given the age, life, cultural and artistic experience of the performers, as well as the setting in which it is performed. LVJ is interested in the two casts of performers performing for each other and sharing their experience with each other as a way to learn about the work further.

Tickets + Details

The event is free and open to Princeton students, faculty and staff. Free tickets are required. To reserve a seat, log-in with Princeton net ID to the University Ticketing website, then select your tickets.

Get directions to the Hearst Dance Theater and find other venue information for the arts complex.

COVID-19 Guidance + Updates

Per Princeton University policy, all guests are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and to wear a mask when indoors.

Accessibility

Visit our Venues and Studios section for accessibility information at our various locations. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.

 

About the Guest Artists

Angie Pittman (performer) is a New York City-based dance artist, maker, and educator. Her work has been performed at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog (Catch 73), The Chocolate Factory, and Danspace Project. Angie is currently working as a collaborator and dance artist with Anna Sperber and LVJ Performance Co. She holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a graduate minor in African American Studies and is a M’Singha Wuti certified teacher of the Umfundalai technique. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how the body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power. As an educator, she is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at Marymount Manhattan College.

Mary Read (performer) has a diverse educational background spanning dance, masked theater, psychoanalysis, social work and couples and family therapy. In addition to her work with Larissa Velez-Jackson in both Star Pû Method and Yackez, Read has performed in works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Hilary Clark, Lily Gold, Natalie Greene, Molly Poerstel, Tere O’connor, Katy Pyle, Jen Rosenblit, Jacob Slominski, and enrico d wey.

Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) is a choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, performer and teacher who uses improvisation as a main tool for research and creation. Called “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance” by The New York Times, she creates works that grant audiences an accessible entry into contemporary art’s critical and political discourse. LVJ was named a Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at Princeton University 2021-2022 and recently joined Sarah Lawrence College Theater Department as an adjunct faculty member. In 2011, she launched an experimental song-and-dance collaboration with her husband, Jon Velez-Jackson, called Yackez, “The World’s Most Loveable Musical Duo.” Yackez presented their two-act world premiere at New York Live Arts in March 2017, entitled “Give It To You Stage,” a year after LVJ received the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grant to Artists Award. In 2016, LVJ was also nominated for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer” by the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards. She is the Artistic Director of her project-based company, LVJ Performance Co., which will premiere a new work at the Chocolate Factory Theater in New York City in 2022. A Boricua-American originally from Newark, New Jersey, and a recent cancer survivor, LVJ is committed to the healing and transformative potential of art and integrated body/mind practice.

Presented By

  • Program in Dance

Tags

Share

Related