CHUTZPAH!PLUS
birds sing a pretty song. (artists from Canada/USA/Argentina/Israel)
Canadian Premiere
May 13: 8pm
May 14: 7:30pm

This exhilarating performance birds sing a pretty song, choreographed by Rebecca Margolick and co-created and directed with Maxx Berkowitz, seamlessly fuses dance, live music and interactive media. This final full-length work, created during a year-long Fellowship in New York City at the 14th St. Y Theatre with LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture and two Chutzpah! Festival Creation Residencies, is brought to life on stage with dancers Margolick and Chuck Wilt, guitarist/media/composer Berkowitz, guitarist/composer Jake Klar, percussionist Bruno Esrubilsky and Israeli author and scholar Ruby Namdar.

This full-length work revolves around two dancers, suspended in an environment where our hyper social nature reaches a point in which the lines of virtual and reality are obscured. The audience follows the dancer’s wanderings through a world manipulated and influenced by the "curators" (the three live musicians) and projected light structures that move and direct the world onstage. Throughout the piece they encounter an attempt at a relationship, fleeting glimpses of memory, and a fight for connection. Tied in with sound and video reactive visuals, the piece explores how surveillance and confinement through our digital and physical surroundings affect one’s sense of reality and self.

Addressing these questions through contemporary dance, interactive/responsive film and live music, all tied together by audio manipulation and seamless integration, birds sing a pretty song will celebrate its world premiere at the 14th Street Y Theatre in Manhattan and then head directly to Vancouver for its Canadian Premiere at Chutzpah!PLUS.

This work was supported by Chutzpah! creation residencies in Vancouver and Sointula, BC and creation residencies in New York City with the 14th Street Y/LABA .

The Chutzpah! Festival through multi-week creation and production residencies has been supporting the creation of Canadian and International new dance and world premiere’s for the past six years.

LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, based out of the 14th Street Y in Manhattan, annually brings a group of 10 professional artists (music, dance, theatre, literary) together to explore classic texts using the rich literary and intellectual tradition of Judaism, offering an opportunity for ancient existing stories to become a non-literal and abstract catalyst for new contemporary performance creations.

BA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, based out of the 14th Street Y in Manhattan.