A shared evening of dance by Rosy Simas and Deborah Jinza Thayer questioning identity, culture, and the feminine

Rosy Simas – We Wait In The Darkness

Deborah Jinza Thayer – All Hail the Queen

Tuesday, May 24. 7:30pm

Weitzman Center for Creativity, Carleton College

320 3rd Street East, Northfield, MN 55057

FREE

Northfield, MN -- Rosy Simas Danse and Deborah Jinza Thayer’s Movement Architecture unite in a shared evening of dance questioning identity, culture, and the feminine. Simas and Thayer have a long history of directing, presenting and performing in each other’s work. This evening marks the end of a 14-city tour of Simas’ We Wait in the Darkness and the emergence of Thayer’s All Hail the Queen, a work-in-progress. Their work explores emotionally charged subject matter—Thayer through humor and Simas with intense, patient movement and atmosphere.

Rosy Simas’ performs her critically acclaimed and award-winning solo We Wait In The Darkness, a performance work of displacement and homecoming fueled by the stories of the Seneca women of Simas’ family. We Wait In The Darkness is performed within an environment of film, a paper set, and an original surround sound music composition performed by French contemporary music composer French François Richomme.

“This is a generous and personal work on many levels — it’s as if Simas has flung open the door to her subconscious and invited the audience inside to have a look around.” – Caroline Palmer, Star Tribune

“It takes a special kind of performer to bewitch an audience with stillness. Rosy Simas has that gift. An articulate dancer, Simas has the ability to suffuse the smallest movements, or even complete motionlessness, with a captivating aura.” – Sheila Regan, City Pages

Deborah Jinza Thayer shares a work-in-progress performance All Hail the Queen which celebrates the Vagina and humorously pushes against a phallic-centered packaging of the female experience. Both sung and danced, this commentary uses the ammunition provided by the culture and rams it into a nutribullet. This re-imagined blend collaborates with visual artist Amelia Biewald and is performed by Non Edwards, Missa Kes, Christine Maginnis, Kerry Parker, Sharon Picasso, Taylor Shevey, and Taja Will. Lyrics by Melissa Birch.

“Deborah Jinza Thayer creates dance theater that is both smart and architecturally sound… Thayer is known for work that delivers a visceral punch.” - Linda Shapiro, City Pages

“...always women, and always a situation of equal parts verve and cringe, attraction and repulsion. Thayer has an original vision, certainly; shes one of those artists compelled to lift up the edges of things, and what she uncovers is worth looking at.” - Lightsey Darst, MN Artists

“Now this sounds intriguing.” - Camille LeFevre, MinnPost

ARTISTS

Rosy Simas (Seneca) is a Minneapolis based performer working primarily as a choreographer. Her approach to dance making is multi-faceted: She designs immersive containers for performance using sound, textiles, film, and paper. Simas’ dance work investigates how culture, history, home, and identity are stored in the body and can be expressed in movement. She has created work speaking to a wide range of subject matter – from the Iraq war to her grandmother’s American Indian boarding school experience.

Simas received a 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Dance Fellowship and awards from the

TIWAHE Foundation, the First People’s Fund, and residencies at the Indigenous Arts Program at Banff Centre; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts; the Oneida Arts Program, and the Talking Stick Festival. We Wait In The Darkness toured North America with support from the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Skin(s), a dance work that brings together presenting organizations with community and Native artists, was commissioned by presenters in Minneapolis, Berkeley, and Oakland and will tour to Chicago and Duluth.

Simas’ new work is supported by a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2015 National Presenters Network Creation Fund, and a 2016 NEFA National Dance Project Touring Award. In 2016, Simas will creat dances for students at Northwestern University, St. Paul Conservatory of the Arts, and the University of Minnesota while co-curating with the Ordway – Oyate Okotakiciyapi – a series of Native contemporary dance events in the Twin Cities in March 2017.

http://www.rosysimas.com/wewaitinthedarkness/

After spending the first six years in Japan and Southeast Asia, Deborah Jinza Thayer grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received an MFA in Dance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Based in Minneapolis/St. Paul, she has created over 60 original works and presents her work as Movement Architecture which explores movement in structured environments. The work strives to create altered metaphorical spaces which request an embodied reflection of both our internal and external worlds.

Jinza Thayer received the McKnight Fellowship for Choreography in 2004 and a SAGE Award for Choreographic Concept and Design in 2010. She has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, American Composers Forum, and Jerome Foundation, among others. She maintains a one-on-one movement training practice in St. Paul and currently teaches somatics, technique and composition at Zenon Dance Company and School in Minneapolis.

http://www.jinzadances.com/