Kyle Marshall Choreography

A Partnership Project with the Catskill Mountain Foundation and The Joyce Theater Foundation

By Joan Oldknow

On May 13, 2023, Kyle Marshall Choreography, A Partnership Project with the Catskill Mountain Foundation and The Joyce Theater Foundation, performs Alice and Ruin at the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville. Performers include Kyle Marshall (artistic director and choreographer), Bree Breeden, Cayleen Del Rosario, Niara Hardister, and Nik Owens. This is the first of the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s four partnership projects with The Joyce Theater in 2023. HopeBoykinDance, Olivier Tarpaga Dance, and Ronald K. Brown/Evidence will be in residence with Catskill Mountain Foundation this fall.

Alice

Based on the music of Alice Coltrane, Alice is a new solo piece about transcendence and self-love, performed by Bree Breeden of Kyle Marshall Choreography, or KMC. Alice Coltrane was a composer, pianist, harpist, organist and the wife of John Coltrane. After his passing, Alice went on her own spiritual journey and built an Ashram, a Hindu religious retreat, creating a devotional space for music and spiritual enlightenment in California. She invested her life in that spiritual journey for decades after her husband passed. KMC is using different pieces of music to hold Alice’s journey and to allow the audience to go on a spiritual journey with them.

“During the pandemic, I think it was very challenging for all of us; and for me, it was also a place where I got a lot of inspiration,” said Kyle Marshall. “Alice was someone that I found during the lockdown, and her music really informed me. My partner Edo Tastic, who is also the visual director of the company, was also moved and transformed by Alice’s music, and he was the one that actually inspired me to make this piece. With his inspiration and with my love for her music, we built a work for Bree that I think is really exciting.“

He continued: “It’s my first solo for another dancer, so it’s a really wonderful opportunity. I‘ve made dances for groups, so it is a similar connection. But I think for a solo, there’s a lot that happens for me internally that I have to learn to say, and to help shape what’s happening internally for Bree. It is kind of an exchange, where there is a lot of movement that I’ve given them in the piece, and there is a lot of conversation about how things are shaped. I might give a note to Bree about how to do something and they’ve already felt that as another body movement. We both can agree on how something might be done or how we want to try something. They’re also working in their internal impulse with the work. It’s been very humbling, it’s been a lot of learning. It’s been really exciting to learn how to communicate something that is internal and also seeing how my aesthetics and how my movement folds into someone else’s dancing. I think that’s been a kind of cool thing to play with and figure out. What am I holding on to that is just me and my choice, or how can I give them space to embody and interpret the information I am giving them? So, it’s a little bit of a back and forth with what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s more about keeping what’s happening. It’s been a nice process to work with.”

Ruin

Ruin is a new piece commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art that premiered in January, 2023. The piece was originally commissioned by the museum to support an exhibition on Henri Matisse. Influenced by that, Kyle thought about early Egyptians, Greek life or similar images in ancient history. The rhythms and the circles in all of that has a very ancient earthly feeling to it. In building this work, it has a kind of ancient feeling to it, which is why they wear tunics, hand painted by Edo Tastic.

Ruin is a piece that’s thinking about rhythm, and how the body can be used to make and amplify sound. Kyle has used samples of rhythm and body percussion in the past. For Ruin, Kyle wanted to build something that would use that as the basis, building something with just their bodies. Thinking about how rhythm is both a cycle and a way of making sound and also in our daily lives. Sometimes, it’s very atmospheric. sometimes it’s songlike, other times, it’s very rhythmic and percussive, and there are layers.

Ruin involves a piece of sound equipment called a dynamic listening device which is built by Kyle Marshall himself and his collaborator Cal Fish. Consisting of different pieces of equipment including pads, buckets and coils, the device allows the dancers to amplify their bodies, record their sounds in real time and then play it back to the audience. All of the music for the piece is made by the dancers in real time. Nothing is prerecorded, nothing is arranged beforehand, and everything is human-generated.

The Residency

During the Catskill Mountain Foundation residency in Tannersville, KMC will have the opportunity to really figure out how to get Ruin on a dance stage. KMC performed it at the museum in Philadelphia with a particular set up, and now they need to learn how to do it in a program. The biggest challenge is how to transport the equipment and how to set it up and quickly remove it. Kyle will also review the choreography to see if changes can be made to make the piece a bit stronger. Kyle is excited to get back into the piece and fit it for the concert stage. Ruin will be the main piece that KMC will present in Tannersville. Along with Onyx and Alice, it’s the third piece that’s going to be on KMC’s program at The Joyce Theater in the fall.

More Information And Tickets

Kyle Marshall Choreography will perform Alice and Ruin at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main St., Hunter, NY on Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 7:30 pm. Tickets can be purchased online at www.catskillmtn.org or by contacting the box office via email at boxoffice@catskillmtn.org or by phone at 518 263 2063. Note that online ticket sales close 5 hours prior to performance time. Tickets purchased ahead are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and $7 for students. Tickets purchased at the door are $30 for adults, $25 for seniors and $7 for students. For information about upcoming programs at Catskill Mountain Foundation, please visit www.catskillmtn.org.

About Kyle Marshall Choreography

Founded in 2014, Kyle Marshall Choreography is a company that sees the dancing body as a container of history, an igniter of social reform, and a site of celebration. KMC believes in the creation, sharing, and teaching of dance as a way to deepen our knowledge of who we are as individuals, how we develop relationships, and ultimately societies.

KMC has performed at venues throughout the NYC area including: Chelsea Factory, BAM Next Wave Festival, Joe’s Pub, The Shed, Roulette, Abrons Arts Center, Bickford Theater/Morris Museum and the Entertainment Community Fund Arts Center. National touring has included: Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (Beckett, MA), FringeArts (Philadelphia), and New World Center (Miami). Choreographic Commissions have included: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Baryshnikov Arts Center, “Dance on the Lawn” Montclair Dance Festival, NJPAC and Harlem Stage. KMC has been in residence at Bethany Arts Community, Monira Foundation, 92Y, American Dance Festival, The Center for Ballet and The Arts at NYU and with The Joyce Theater at 280 Gibney Dance Center. The company regularly engages in educational and repertory workshops in high school and colleges throughout the region including; Bloomfield College, Trenton Central High School, Sarah Lawrence College, Rutgers University, County Prep High School and Virginia Commonwealth University. Director Kyle Marshall was a 2021-22 Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Dance at Princeton University.

Additionally, Kyle has received a 2018 NY Dance and Performance Juried Bessie Award, a 2020 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Award and was a 2020 Bessie Honoree for the revival of Colored. Kyle is a graduate of Rutgers University, a NJ State Arts Fellow and an adjunct professor at NYU’s Open Arts Program.

Kyle Marshall Choreography is fiscally sponsored through The Foundation for Independent Artists.

All photos by Albert Yee.