Master Class with Abby Z and the New Utility (NYC)

SCHEDULE:

April 19, 2018

10:30am | Contemporary Master Class

LOCATION:

Austin Community College Highland Campus

6101 Highland Campus Drive, Austin, TX 78752

Building 4000, Room 2205

TUITION:

$20 Pre-paid online

$25 Cash or Check to AM Arts

WHAT TO BRING:

Clothes you can easily move in, pants are encouraged

Sneakers

Knee Pads

Abby Zbikowski:

Bessie Award winning choreographer Abby Zbikowski started creating work under Abby Z and the New Utility in 2012 with core company members Fiona Lundie and Jennifer Meckley to experiment with the potential and choreographic possibility of the body being pushed beyond its perceived limits, as well as to create a new movement lexicon that works towards triangulating dancing/moving bodies across multiple cultural value systems simultaneously. Our creative process/practice with collaborative performers works towards re-imagining known outcomes and is meant to relentlessly challenge the systems we cling to for understanding.

Since its inception, Abby Z and the New Utility has been presented by the Abrons Arts Center, Movement Research at Danspace Project, and the Gibney Dance Center and have been in residence at the Bates Dance Festival, the American Dance Festival, S.L.A.M.(Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), and most recently at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, where Abby was was selected to take part in the inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence-Program.

Artist Statement:

I make contemporary dance works that pay homage to the effort of living, tactics of survival, and the aesthetics produced as a result, citing my practice of Afro-Diasporic dance forms hip-hop, tap, and West African, and punk music/aesthetics/values as major influences on my sensibilities. I formed the New Utility in 2012 with core company members Fiona Lundie and Jennifer Meckley to experiment with the potential and choreographic possibility of the body being pushed beyond its perceived limits, as well as to create a new movement lexicon that works towards triangulating dancing/moving bodies across multiple cultural value systems simultaneously.  Our work together has focused on reclaiming the brutal rigor that goes into the practice and performance of hyper physical dance forms by shifting the mindset of the labor away from product and repositioning the choreographic work as a vehicle for transformation that welcomes failure as an inevitability on the path to growth. My creative process/practice with collaborative performers works towards re-imagining known outcomes and is meant to relentlessly challenge the systems we cling to for understanding. Our work is driven by the obsessive practice that accompanies the mastery of complex physical tasks, and structurally builds upon the psyche-emotional growth that evolves as a byproduct of practice. 

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