Celebrate the Grand Opening of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) with three weekends of world-class artistic performances and workshops, premieres of commissioned artworks, eye-opening exhibitions of research at the frontiers of science, and social events ranging from black-tie elegant to come-as-you-are eclectic.

For an up-to-date list of performances and more information please visit:
» http://www.empac.rpi.edu/

EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - announces the four recipients of the 2008 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission. Chosen from a short list of 28 projects by an international panel of dance-film practitioners, curators and producers, the projects range in format, style and emotional tone: from single-channel video installation to 16mm film, from the spectacular to the surreal.

The projects will receive awards ranging from $7,000 to $40,000 and will be premiered in the fall of 2009 at EMPAC.

» Full Press Release

LIZ AGGISS + BILLY COWIE (UK)
April 15 – 19, 2008

Men in the Wall and In the Flesh (3D video installations) :: Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Tuesday, April 15 - Saturday, April 19, 2008
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus

Gallery hours:
Thursday, 12 - 8 pm
Friday, 12 - 8 pm
Saturday, 12 - 8 pm

All events free and open to the public!

I hope that each of you will engage with EMPAC programs and explore what meaning EMPAC has for you. I guarantee that it will be challenging. I guarantee that it will be new. I guarantee that it will transform how we regard science, technology, and the arts, and their nexus — how we interact with the future, how we see ourselves as human beings.

— Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, President, Rensselaer.

The three opening weekends highlight, in turn, arts, science and technology, and campus community — and the impact of EMPAC upon them — with elements of each threaded throughout.

The Arts

The first weekend, October 3-5 will celebrate the expressive range that can be accommodated by EMPAC : from classical music presented in an environment of unprecedented acoustical purity, to interactive multimedia works that test the boundaries of performer and audience, to research exhibitions.

Research, Science, and Technology

The second weekend, October 9-12 we will host a symposium featuring eminent researchers from the science and engineering communities in a discussion about where those fields may intersect and connect with us, and the extent to which they will drive, challenge, augment, and inform each other.

Campus Community

The third weekend, October 16-19, will feature artistic performances ranging in media and style, and chosen in collaboration with Student Life, with the intent of reflecting the interests of the Rensselaer student body. It, also, is Rensselaer’s Family Weekend.

Throughout the opening, exhibits detailing our architectural and artistic history, as well as its future potential as a research platform, will be on display.

For a towering, incandescent presence and for raising the bar to celestial heights in her full-tilt performances; for her deep, unwavering commitment to the meaning and the soul of the choreography in Urban Bush Women's season at The Joyce Theater.

Nora Chipaumire Nora Chipaumire was born in Mutare, Zimbabwe during the Chimurenga Chechipiri, or second war of liberation. A self-exiled artist now based in New York, she investigates the collaborative process within cultural, political, economic, and technological identities of African contemporary life. Nora Chipaumire is a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) 2007-08 Choreographic Fellow. She is a recipient of National Dance Project (NDP) Tour Support in 2007-08. She also received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant to participate in the JANT-BI Diaspora Project in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal in May and August 2007. Nora was honored with the Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts on March 10, 2007. She is featured in the documentary Movement (R)evolution and is the subject of the documentary-in-progress, Nora Chipaumire: A Physical Biography, directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, supported by a 2007 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission.

LIZ AGGISS + BILLY COWIE (UK)
April 15 – 19, 2008

Hi Jinx (performance lecture) :: Liz Aggiss
Tues, April 15, 8PM in Academy Hall, Rensselaer campus, Troy, NY

Men in the Wall and In the Flesh (3D video installations) ::
Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie
Tues-Sat, April 15-19, noon-8PM in the Greene Gallery, Rensselaer campus

All events free and open to the public!

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They are near-mythic figures. Even to those with only fleeting interest in the arts or the history of modern dance their names resound: Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp . . . Heidi Dzinkowska.

Well, maybe not Heidi Dzinkowska.

So, why has British artist Liz Aggiss chosen to enact, in her performance-lecture Hi Jinx, this unknown yet “seminal early twentieth century dancer, choreographer and filmmaker”? Why dedicate herself to such thorough presentation of Dzinkowska’s legacy via archival film, dance reconstructions and demonstrations of Dzinkowska’s “highly influential”--we’re assured--Dance Commandments?

The answer may be found in the curious Commandments themselves. “Commandment Number One: Thou shalt not improvise; keep your improvising for the bathroom!”

Or in the choreographer’s idiosyncratic performances, as recreated by Aggiss: One piece lasts just so long as it takes the dancer to crack every knuckle—indeed, seemingly, every joint—in her body. During another, Aggiss entices the audience: “If I were you, I’d just let my eyes wander up and down my body; because I’m about to perform a rather graceful and sinuous turn.”

The turn is accomplished—after much fussing with a handful of uncooperative frock—with slightly more grace than a fall down a steep staircase.

Aggis has been called the Vivienne Westwood of the dance film world: “anarchic, strawberry blonde, fearless and satirical,” and Hi Jinx displays a warm rebellious wit while asking the audience to think sideways about its desire to create historical icons from the past.

Following the performance, the public is invited to the opening reception for two video-installation projects by Aggiss and collaborator Billy Cowie, which will be showing all week.

Men in the Wall is a 3D video installation depicting four life-sized men in a sequence of poems, jokes, songs, flamenco—and naps. In the Flesh has been called a “magical experience.” How else to describe a performance by a dancer who appears solid and present, but is in fact a projection? 3D glasses create the illusion that she dances before the viewer “in the flesh.”

Parking for Hi Jinx is available in the lot adjacent to the venue, with entrance on College Avenue.

Parking for the Greene Gallery is available on street, in metered parking spots, and in the Visitors Lot behind the Public Safety offices with access directly across the street from the Playhouse on 15th street.

All events free and open to the public!

Additional information: www.empac.rpi.edu

DEADLINE : MARCH 01, 2008

Online registration now available.

OPEN CALL FOR PROPOSALS
The EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission supports the creation of new works in the field of experimental dance for the screen made by, or in collaboration with, a choreographer or movement artist based in the Americas.

Up to 3 commissions will be awarded in the range of $7,000 - $50,000. Artists may apply to create works in conjunction with the Artist-in-Residence program, taking advantage of EMPAC’s spaces, technology, infrastructure such as computer-controlled rigging or large-scale immersive studio environments.  

-- guidelines, application and info: empac.rpi.edu/commissions/DMC 
-- questions: dancemovies@rpi.edu or 1.518.276.3918
-- deadline: 3/01/08

Backed by the Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts, the DANCE MOViES Commission supports experimental works for the screen including film, video, installation and other audio-visual formats.

The DANCE MOViES Commission 2008 PANEL:

-- Leonel Brum (Brazil)
-- Lynette Kessler (USA)
-- Christina Molander (Sweden)
-- Laura Taler (Canada)

Please visit the DANCE MOViES Commission website for full bios of the panelists.

About EMPAC
EMPAC – the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center – is a place and a program where the arts challenge and alter our technology and technology challenges and alters the arts. Founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, EMPAC is an arts institution that draws strength from being part of a great research university. It operates nationally and internationally: attracting innovative artists, both renowned and emerging, from around the world; offering artists, researchers, and audiences opportunities that are available nowhere else under a single roof; providing unsurpassed facilities for creative exploration, and for research in fields such as visualization and movement capture; sending new artworks onto the global stage.
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www.empac.rpi.edu

SLAVOJ ZIZEK: Pervert's Guide to Cinema
Tuesday, January 29 8pm
Heffner Alumni House

LONE TWIN: Nine Years
Wednesday + Thursday, Feb 13 – 14 8pm
Rensselaer Playhouse

JOHNATHAN BERGER: Data Speaks, Are you listening?
Thursday, March 6 4:30pm
Biotechnology Auditorium

LIZ AGGISS: Hi-Jinx
Tuesday, April 15 8pm
Academy Hall

AGGISS & BILLIE COWIE: Men In the Wall
Tuesday, April 15 4 – 10pm
Wednesday, April 16 12 – 5:30pm
Thursday – Friday, April 17–18 12 – 10pm
Saturday, April 19 2 – 10pm
Greene Gallery, Rensselaer Campus

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A TINY BELL
Friday April 25 8pm
Location to be announced

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/news/2007/2007_1110.html

http://www.empac.rpi.edu/commissions/DMC/workshop/

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November: DANCE MOViES Commission WORKSHOPS
led by EMPAC's Dance Curator Hélène Lesterlin

Free and open to artists interested in applying to the commission. No need to register, just come!

Topics covered: How to apply, what makes a strong proposal, information on the facilities of EMPAC, issues related to installation-based works, examples shown, followed by a Q&A and discussion.

BUENOS AIRES Thursday, November 8th, 2:30 - 4:30 pm
Videodanza Festival International de Buenos Aires
For information and location: http://www.videodanzaba.com.ar/t_produccion07.htm

LOS ANGELES Wednesday, November 28th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
18th Street Arts Center
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
In the main gallery space.
http://www.18thstreet.org/

NEW YORK CITY Monday, December 3rd, 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011
Take the elevator to the third floor.
http://www.dtw.org/

FREE and open to the public.

DATE: Saturday, November 17, 2007
TIME: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: Academy Hall, Rensselaer Campus

The artist duos hail from San Francisco, Mexico City, and New York and include Sue Costabile + Laetitia Sonami, Luke Dubois + Manrico Montero, and Benton Bainbridge + Bobby Previte.

In the 1970’s, in tandem with pioneering organizations like the Experimental Television Center in New York, artists began developing electronics for their live and installation-based video art. In this tradition, the artists in Custom Control all have personally crafted some aspect of their hardware or software for their performance tools.

FREE and open to the public.

DATE: Friday, October 26, 2007
TIME: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: Heffner Alumni House, Rensselaer Campus

EMPAC (the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) is now accepting proposals for its 2008 commissions. The deadline for the proposals is February 15, 2008.