This month’s Sunday Service, Knockdown Center’s free monthly performance series, is hosted by Same As Sister/Briana Brown-Tipley and Hilary Brown. Titled Pairings in Horror: The Visceral & The Visual Impact, the evening will feature live and digital performance responding to a narrative within the horror genre, matching artists who will collaboratively experiment, improvise and create. Pairings include Lamy Istrefi Jr. with Leo Genovese + Mersiha Mesihovic/CIRCUITDEBRIS and Stacy Grossfield Dance Projects + Gil Sperling, and more TBA! Plus a secret text reading by Rie Yamaguchi-Borden.
Same As Sister was formed out of a proposition to see if it was possible to construct a horror dance – a choreographic vocabulary that truly evokes feelings of suspense and surprise – for the viewer to experience. Since then, the collective’s explorations within the horror/terror genre have transformed into a cross-disciplinary approach to performance-making, that in the words of Jess Barbagallo, “creates a wholly new universe on-stage that revels in a perverse celebration of the ominous.” For Pairings in Horror, Same As Sister invites teams of artists to open a door to this universe by responding to a secret text that will be disclosed to the audience only at the end of the evening. Each pair will utilize live and digital elements to emphasize the sensory pleasure that best represents their collaboration between disciplines. Set in a haunted house, the artists’ unique interpretations of the shared text will become rooms into their uncanny and unpredictable imaginations, perhaps even nightmares.
Same As Sister/Briana Brown-Tipley and Hilary Brown (S.A.S.) is a New York City based performance collective founded in 2013 by choreographers Briana Brown-Tipley and Hilary Brown. Before this joining of creative interests, the sisters, who originate from Toronto, Canada, graduated from École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (LADMMI), and have performed for a variety of artists including Peggy Baker, Candice Breitz, Doug Elkins, Philippa Kaye, Mike Kelley and Jillian Peña. Same As Sister collaborate in the fields of contemporary dance and theater, and experimental music and film/video to explore the complexity of human behavior and its inherent uncanniness. Their cross-disciplinary works have been presented at Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre (2017 Artist Program Residents), Movement Research and Bailout Theater at Judson Memorial Church, CRAWL at 22 Boerum Place, BRIC Arts | Media House (2015 BRIClab Residents), New York Live Arts (2014-2015 Fresh Tracks Residents), Triskelion Arts, Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Chen Dance Center. sameassister.squarespace.com
Lamy Istrefi Jr. is a New York City based Jazz drummer/percussionist, composer and conductor, originally from the Republic of Kosovo. Istrefi Jr. attended the University of Music and Dramatic Arts Graz (KUG) in Austria, before relocating to the United States. He is currently a member of Grammy award-winning saxophonist, Joe Lovano’s Classic Quartet, for which he has toured internationally to perform at such prestigious festivals and venues as the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, the PDX Jazz Festival, Blue Note Milano, Bimhuis Amsterdam and the Bergamo Jazz Festival, among others. Istrefi Jr. also collaborates with a diverse and notable group of musicians for his own artistic projects which include the Lamy Istrefi Jr. Trio and Quartet featuring NEA Jazz Master, Dave Liebman, and the Musical Minds Orchestra, a large experimental ensemble that he founded in 2010. smallslive.com/artists/1284-lamy-istrefi-jr/
Leo Genovese, originally from Venado Tuerto, Argentina, studied classical piano at the National University of Rosario before moving to Boston to attend the Berklee College of Music, where he graduated as a Professional Music Major in 2003. Genovese has performed and recorded with renowned musicians such as Hal Crook, Darren Barrett, George Garzone, Francisco Mela, Joe Lovano, Bob Gulloti, Phil Grenadier, Dave Santoro, Chris Cheek and Ben Monder. From 2005 he toured internationally and recorded with bassist and vocalist, Esperanza Spalding. His first album, Haiku II, was released in 2004, and was followed by Unlocked in 2008 and Seeds in 2013. facebook.com/leogenovesemusic/
Mersiha Mesihovic/CIRCUITDEBRIS is a space for interdisciplinarity, radical dance and community engagement which Mesihovic initiated in 2011 to formally conceptualize her collaboration with artists across disciplines. She has collaborated closely as a producer, dramaturge, performer/choreographer with artists such as Karen Bernard, Reggie Wilson, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and James Brandon Lewis. Her work has been presented internationally, and received support from New Dance Alliance and New York Foundation for the Arts. Mesihovic currently resides in New York City, where she is actively developing her unique movement method, M-BODYMENT, and teaches at a wide range of institutions and cultural organizations in the United States and abroad including Gibney Dance Center, Peridance Capezio Center, and Wits University in Johannesburg and TUT University in Pretoria, South Africa, where she is a frequent guest lecturer. circuitdebris.org
Stacy Grossfield was born and raised in Lakeland, Florida, and has choreographed and performed in New York City since 2003. Her most recent work, hot dark matter, was presented by JACK in March of 2016. Her previous works include Fur & Tulle and Red, Pink, Black – the latter for which she received a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant in 2013. She has shown work at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BRIC Studio, Center for Performance Research, CATCH, Dance Theater Workshop, Food for Thought at Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Roulette and through AUNTS at various venues including Arts@Renaissance, NADA Art Fair and the New Museum. Grossfield is a choreographer for hire and has recently choreographed the one-man-show, Quiet, Comfort, a Hoi Polloi production at JACK, as well as the Okkervil River music video “Judey On A Street”. She was a 2008-2009 Fresh Tracks Artist-in-Residence at Dance Theater Workshop. She has served on dance panels in NYC and taught a feedback class at Brooklyn Studios for Dance called Show & Listen. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance from SUNY Purchase. stacygrossfield.com
Gil Sperling is a multimedia artist, performance maker and video designer. He has created short films and video installations, video design for the stage and multimedia performances. Sperling is a graduate of the School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem, and holds a BA in Psychology and Philosophy. He spent a year as a fellow at the Cologne Academy of Art (KHM). As a multimedia performance creator his works include Shulamis or the Well and the Pussycat at the Target Margin Yiddish Lab, New York (2012), Sotto Voce, a multimedia musical theater project presented in Berlin (2011) and Ruhe Sanfte, a musical-visual performance presented at the Israeli Opera (2005). Noted video design work includes City of Glass at the New Ohio Theater (2016), Trade Practices at HERE Arts Center (2014), Uriel Acosta at The Chocolate Factory (2014) and Don Giovanni at the Cologne Opera (2010). His video installation work has been presented at the SVA Gallery in New York, Hellerau Arts Center in Dresden, Germany, Kampo Museum in Kyoto, Japan and Ein-Harod Museum in Israel. Sperling was a Nominee for an NY Innovative Theater Award (2016) for Video Design in City of Glass, a Planet Connections Award Winner (2012) for Outstanding Use of Projections and Multimedia in Trafficked and Winner of the Operare 11 Prize for New Musical Theater Productions (2011) for Sotto Voce. gilsperling.com
Rie Yamaguchi Borden born in Ehime, Japan, has been a part of New York City’s vibrant Jazz and free-spirited music scene since 1999. Regardless of the medium she is working in, she has the desire to express most honestly and soulfully all that life has to offer. Yamaguchi-Borden is currently a member of the Musical Minds Orchestra led by Lamy Istrefi Jr., where she collaborates with a variety of artists who are simultaneously engaged in opening their personal and global awareness to delve into something much deeper creatively. She continues to cook up schemes as a Jazz vocalist and drummer in NYC.
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About Sunday Service
Sunday Service is a curated series of short-form live performances across mediums. Taking place the first Sunday of each month in the Ready Room, a guest curator is invited to organize a salon style evening of in-progress works, performances, and presentations, anchored by a framing principle such as a question, proposition, theme, or formal structure. Sunday Service encourages works in progress and interdisciplinary endeavors showcased in a lo-fi environment to foster experimentation and critical discourse amongst peers.
