Gender/Power Composition IV

Led by Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey
October 13 - 15, 2016

Gender/Power Composition IV is an in-process collaborative project led by video artist Maya Ciarrocchi and performance artist Kris Grey in which performers and co-creators Keke Brown, Shawn Escarciga, Ray Ferreira, Sara Jimenez, Massima Lei, Elena Rose Light, Marissa Perel and Pamela Sneed share personal feminist, trans and queer narratives within a framework that blurs authorship. More akin to a piece of music than a script, this score is delivered differently during every performance making it impossible to track from whom the stories originated. In addition to the text, choreographer Sandra Parker has generated a movement-based score with vocabulary derived from background research in common coding and action perception.

Conceived and Directed by Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey in collaboration with Sandra Parker, Keke Brown, Shawn Escarciga, Ray Ferreira, Sara Jimenez, Massima Lei, Elena Rose Light, Marissa Perel and Pamela Sneed with additional text by Becca Blackwell, James Tigger! Ferguson and Kris Grey.

Choreography by Sandra Parker
Lighting Design by Elliott Jenetopulos
Sound Design by Peter Gangi
Dramaturgy by Clarinda Mac Low

Maya Ciarrocchi is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist who works within communities to create socially engaged artworks. Influenced by a past career as a dancer/choreographer, she employs durational video portraiture as a method to reveal how ideology and experience are transcribed onto the body. Her work has been exhibited in New York at: Anthology Film Archives, The Chocolate Factory, Microscope Gallery, New York Live Arts, among other institutions and outside New York at Artisphere (VA), Hammer Museum (CA), Borderlines Film Festival (UK) and Moving Pictures Festival (CAN). Residencies include the Kala Art Institute (CA), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Swing Space (NY), Sedona Summer Colony (AZ) and the Ucross Foundation (WY). She is the recipient a Film/Video grant from the Jerome Foundation and project support from the Puffin Foundation. She was awarded a Jeff and a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for her work as a projections designer and has collaborated with choreographers and directors such as Wally Cardona, Ping Chong, David Cromer, Merce Cunningham, Kristin Marting, Bebe Miller and Donna Uchizono among many others. Gender/Power has been presented at Gibney Dance, the Invisible Dog Arts Center and Smack Mellon. Ciarrocchi received her M.F.A. in Video and Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts and her B.F.A. in Dance from SUNY Purchase.

Kris Grey/Justin Credible is a New York City based gender queer artist whose work exists at the intersection of communication, activism, community building, storytelling, lecture, and studio production in mediums two dimensional, three dimensional, and time based. Grey earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Ohio University. They perform, teach, and exhibit work internationally. Grey was a 2012 Fire Island Artist Residency recipient, the resident artist for the 2012 ANTI Festival for Contemporary Art in Kupoio, Finland, and a teaching artist in 2013 at The International Centre for Training in the Performing Arts in Brussels, Belgium.

Sandra Parker (choreography) is an Australian interdisciplinary artist based in Melbourne, Victoria. Parker is the recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts Dance Board Fellowship and a Centenary Medal for Services to Australian Society and Dance. Her work has been presented in Paris, Berlin, Portugal and New York. Recent projects include: ‘Small Details’ (Dancehouse, Melbourne, 2016); ‘Automaton’, an installation comprising movement, drawing and kinetic sculptures (Sara Scout Presents, Melbourne, 2016); ‘Three Angles’ an interactive single-channel video installation (Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2014); ‘Three Frames’ two video channels, sound, live performance (Vox Populi, Philadelphia, 2013); ‘The Recording’ live performance, (Dance Massive, Melbourne, 2013) and ‘Transit’, live performance, (Faits d’hiver, Paris 2013, Melbourne Festival, 2013).

Gender/Power Composition IV was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, The SHS Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and general operating support from the New York State Council on the Arts. Gender/Power Composition IV was developed as part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Process Space program.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes