Empty Spot

Empty Spot
Different kinds of live action
Choreography and Direction: Rachel Bernsen
http://rachelbernsen.com/

July 17 - 27, 2007

chashama 266 Performance Window
266 West 37th Street
New York, NY

Performances will take place at the following times:
Weds-Thurs July 18-19, 25-26, 7-8p
Fri July 20 & 27, 12-1p & 5-7p
Sat July 21, 12-4p - large group performance

Installation on view throughout

FREE and open to the public

Empty Spot combines elements of visual art and performance, as it presents different kinds of live action inside a consciously artificial landscape. The piece examines how the viewer's perception of time is affected by both long periods of stillness and also continual, sometimes methodical movement. In stillness, bodies create an alluring architecture, subtly shifting and relocating. In movement, the performers test the boundaries of their environment, creating obscure yet compelling narratives.

Artists for the Saturday, July 21st show:
Rachel Bernsen is a dance artist originally from Minneapolis, now based in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown at Dance Theater Workshop, Issue Project Room, Dixon Place, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Aqui the Bushwick, The Brick Theater, and Deitch Projects. She was a 2005/06 Fresh Tracks Artist-in-Residence at Dance Theater Workshop and will be a 2007 Fellow at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in California.

Bernsen has collaborated extensively with composer and performer Taylor Ho Bynum; they have performed regionally throughout New York and New England, and internationally in Antwerp, Belgium and Berlin and Cologne, Germany. Bernsen has also danced with RoseAnne Spradlin, Juliette Mapp, Risa Jaroslow, Urban Bush Women, Stephanie Tack, and Nancy Forshaw-Clapp, among others.

From 2002-2006 she performed and toured nationally and internationally with the performance artists/electro-clash group Fischerspooner, and can be seen in their videos "Emerge", "Just Let Go", and "Never Win". In Minneapolis, Bernsen worked with some of the area's most noted choreographers, such as Morgan Thorson, Wynn Fricke, Baraka De Soleil, Djola Branner, and Leah Nelson, and for two years she performed in "Foxy Tann's Superior Lounge", a weekly theatre and cabaret show written and directed by Heather Wilson.

She has an MFA in Dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in English Literature from Macalester College. She is currently in training to become an Alexander Teacher at the American Center for the Alexander Technique in NYC.