June 1-3, 2017

Janis Brenner & Dancers present its New York Season from Thursday, June 1 – Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 8pm at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway (entrance at 53A Chambers Street), NYC.  Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and are available at 646-837-6809 or www.gibneydance.org/performance/pop/janis-brenner.

Please help us raise the $5,000 we need to cover the rehearsal and performance salaries of our committed and amazing dancers, composer Svjetlana Bukvich, and creative team, including Eva Petric and Mitchell Bogard.

“As citizens of the world, the company is pleased to offer two premieres to our New York audiences –both works having been created and inspired by two very different cultures and collaborative experiences, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Singapore,” said Ms. Brenner. “Allowing myself and my dancers to be influenced by the larger artistic communities we engage with, continues a life-long exploration of movement languages and nuances, and an expansion of my interdisciplinary concerns and inspirations. For the past fifteen years or so, I have found that the concerns of my work return again and again to issues of interpersonal communication, memory, aging, how we listen to ourselves as well as to others, wit, and perhaps even “beauty.” These recent works explore and interrogate many of these areas and allow both the performers and the audience to see themselves as participants in these worlds.”

The company premieres Once You Are Not A Stranger, created in collaboration with Bosnian-born, NYC-based, electro-acoustic composer Svjetlana Bukvich, Slovenian-born installation artist Eva Petric, lighting designer Mitchell Bogard, and costume designer Sue Julien. This interdisciplinary work looks at the ideas of empathy and “otherness” in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious world and uses the dance company as a microcosm of this world. Video projections (by Eva Petrič) are embedded in the center of an elaborate set-piece (by Ms. Petrič and Ms. Brenner), playing a personal and imagistic role in the work. Performed with live music, including Ms. Brenner on vocals and Ms. Bukvich on keyboards.  ***This work has been partially funded by a commissioning grant from the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation.*** 

JB&D’s work Soul River/Blues, originally created in collaboration with Maya Dance Theatre in Singapore, completes the evening: inspired by the music of Ry Cooder and BV Bhatt’s “A Meeting by the River” the work poetically mixes Eastern and Western ideas of the “soul,” the body taking leave and the significance of water as both ritual and force of nature.

We need to raise an additional $5,000 to cover the rehearsal and performance salaries of our committed and amazing dancers, composer Svjetlana Bukvich, and creative team, including Eva Petric and Mitchell Bogard.

Our Dancers: Kyla Barkin*, Janis Brenner, Kara Chan, DeAndre Cousley, Ruth Howard, Sumaya Jackson, Kristi Ann Schopfer, and Aaron Selissen. 

*Of Special Note: Longtime JB&D member Kyla Barkin celebrates nineteen years in the company!

Press following World Premiere of Once You Are Not A Stranger in Sarajevo
"The message of the piece is significant. I'm glad to see work that opens the possibility of each of us recognizing ourselves in the story: what it means to put on someone else's shoes, how people feel in someone else's skin, are we strangers to one another and what it all means for mankind - these are all themes one can talk about when it comes to this performance. In times we live in, which are pretty cruel, we must pay attention to each other. I think we need to re-engage in the social values such as friendship, compassion, and sympathy for others, and nurture that which is humane in all of us."
-Belma Čečo Bakrač
Director of Ballet at the National Theater Sarajevo
Dnevni List News
2/15/2017

Janis Brenner & Dancers is an acclaimed NY company known for its “meticulous artistry” (The Village Voice). The company has performed throughout the world since 1989 and has been presented by leading NY organizations including The Joyce Theater, Danspace Project, 92Y Harkness Dance Project, DTW, Symphony Space, and two projects with the United Nations. JB&D is known for the caliber of its dancers, its multidisciplinary residencies, its “emotionally authentic” and musically diverse work. The company has toured multiple times in Taiwan, Korea, Russia, Indonesia, and throughout Europe, Scandinavia, and the US. Brenner is an award-winning dancer/choreographer/singer, and Artistic Director of Janis Brenner & Dancers. Known for “meticulous artistry”, she has toured in 35 countries and is acclaimed as a “singular performer” with a multifaceted artistic range. Honors: New York “Bessie” Award in Meredith Monk’s work, Lester Horton Award, Fund for US Artists, U.S. State Department grants, Asian Cultural Council, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, US Embassies of Russia, Senegal, Indonesia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and O’Donnell Green Music and Dance Foundation. Her work has been commissioned/restaged on more than 50 companies and colleges worldwide. (recording on ECM Records). Brenner worked closely for years with Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (recording on ECM Records), Michael Moschen (including PBS’ Great Performances), Annabelle Gamson, and with Murray Louis Dance Company working with Rudolf Nureyev, Placido Domingo, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Joseph Papp, Bat Sheva Dance Company and Alwin Nikolais. She is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, serving as Choreographic Mentor for the Choreographers & Composers course.  

For more information, visit www.janisbrenner.com.

Once You Are Not A Stranger is Janis and Svjetlana's 1st Collaborative Project!
"One of the most interesting electronic writers around" (SoundWordSight), Sarajevo-born and New York City-based composer and media artist Svjetlana Bukvich specializes in an art-rock tinged blend of classical, avant-garde, world and experimental music for dance, film, and the concert stage. Integrating technology, trail-blazing performers, and tuning of her own design in productions described as "ecstatic musical experiences" (New Music Connoisseur), she has appeared in numerous venues in the US, and internationally including Beijing, London, Johannesburg, Berlin and Copenhagen. Bukvich is featured in the book "In Her Own Words - Conversations with Composers in the United States" along with twenty-five contemporary women composers, including Meredith Monk, Joan Tower, and Pauline Oliveros. A 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Music/Sound, Bukvich has enjoyed support from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the Soros Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, GENERATE: The Frances Richard Fund for Innovative Artists of Promise, and USArtists International. Bukvich’s only solo release to date, the genre-busting album EVOLUTION (PARMA Recordings) featuring bassist Tony Levin (David Bowie), electric guitarist Mordy Ferber (Miroslav Vitous) and electric violist Martha Mooke (Lou Reed) was hailed as "astounding, mind expanding" (babysue), and was featured on more than 20 radio stations across the US and abroad.

Eva Petrič, originally from Slovenia, is a multimedia artist working in photography, video, performance, sound and site specific installations. Her art was shown at over 40 solo and 62 group exhibitions in Slovenia, Argentina, Austria, China, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Macedonia,Mexico, Poland,Serbia, Philippines, Spain, Turkey and USA. She was selected twice for Beijing Art Biennale (2012 and 2015), and nominated for  Venice International Art Biennale 2013 and 2015. Awards (selection): 2016 SNBA Silver medal for photography, Paris; 2011 Pfann Ohman Preis,Vienna, Austria;  2010 Vordemberge-Gildewart award, 2010 grant of Ministry of Culture of  Slovenia, "Art critics' choice" 2008 by Association of Slovenian Art Critics, 2006 Čižek award for best short digital video in Slovenia.

POP: Performance Opportunity Project provides the dance community with space, support, and subsidized space for showings and performances at Gibney Dance.  

Janis Brenner & Dancers is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Janis Brenner & Dancers must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.