#Nicholas Sciscione

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Nicholas Sciscione, a member of the Stephen Petronio Company, in Steve Paxton’s “Excerpt From Goldberg Variations” at the Joyce Theater.

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Connecting my present to the foundations of my past...

Prior to performing at Montpellier Danse Festival, Stephen participated in an interview with Wilson Le Personnic, digging into his thoughts about Bloodlines and the works being presented on the program. The English translation is below:

You present in Montpellier Danse a 4-piece program: Tread by Merce Cunningham, Yvonne Rainer's Trio A With Flags, Steve Paxton's Goldberg Variations and your latest creation American Landscapes. What do these 4 pieces have in common? The historical works by Cunningham, Paxton and Rainer frame historical moments that created a context for my artistry to grow in. This is the foundation of Bloodlines and is a way to connect my present with the foundations of my past.

Tread and Trio A With Flags was created in the 70s, Goldberg Variations in the 80s. What do these years represent in the history of dance in the United States? What do these pieces represent especially in the history of American dance? These works represent a total redefinition of what dance can be, how movement can be generated, and what the underpinnings of composition can be on a stage that is not dominated by narrative and meaning. I will say particularly for Trio A with Flags, it was a complete draining of inflection and meaning and compositional skill that were previous prerequisites for what we thought a good dance was. Goldberg Variations, and to some extent, Tread, also present a relaxed kind of compositional. Particularly with Goldberg, an improvisational composition based on simple themes involving unexplored terrain in the body, particularly the use of the spine.

What is the story of Goldberg Variations? Why did you choose to put this particular Steve Paxton piece together? I met Steve as a noice dancer when I was 18 years old at a time when he was just inventing contact improvisation. I have seen his body of work first hand over the course of my career and he was in fact one of my first important teachers. Goldberg Variations is an improvisational work as performed by Paxton and my proposition to him was that I would memorize one of his improvisations as a kind portrait to give back to him. I felt that my unique position as an early student of his while he was brokering this kind of vocabulary put me in a very unique position to do this kind of work in honor of him. Many, many artists can employ his principles, but I felt that with my historical relation with him, and the talent of my current dancer Nicholas Sciscione, we could come very close to a deep portrayal of the essence of Paxton’s dancing.

How did the re-creation take place? Did Steve Paxton intervene in the transmission process? What does Steve Paxton think of the covers of these old pieces? Steve sent me a particular evening performance of the Goldberg Variations from 1992. With my dancers, I set out to reproduce an excerpt as closely as possible to what we saw in that performance. We then began to send rehearsal videos to Paxton for his feedback. He made various recommendations and suggestions of ways to investigate other kinds of movement that might inflect what he was seeing in our work. For example, he suggested several rehearsals with eyes closed, as well as working with dancers of different abilities and physical limitations to give us a new perspective.

What is the story of Trio A With Flags? Why did you choose to put Yvonne Rainer's piece together, in particular? Yvonne and Steve were friends and colleagues and their work informed each other greatly during their careers. I grew up with a close working relationship with both of them and they were stripping down movement in very similar ways, all parallel to the Minimalist movement of visual arts in New York in the 70’s. Strip work down to its essence the fact of its motion devoid of meaning, inflection, and preconceived destination!

How did the re-creation take place? Did Yvonne Rainer participate in the transmission process? What does Yvonne Rainer think of the covers of these old pieces? I’ve known Yvonne socially and professionally since I began dancing in New York in 1978. I was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Company and Yvonne and Trisha were very good friends as well. I got a lot of social time with Yvonne who was then making films and not so much choreography. It was a great pleasure to have her in the room to give us advice about Trio A while having one of her dancers do the heavy lifting in the transmission process. There were times they disagreed about various things, and that was all the more fun. Restaging a work is not an exact science, and part of the beauty of the experience is that everyone sees everything from a different point of view, but somehow we arrive at an agreement of what the work is.

Your company has already taken back several pieces of Merce Cunningham. How is Tread a special piece? What does Tread represent in Merce Cunningham's work? Tread represents a very special moment in Merce’s history. It is very playful and very involved with the interaction and lifting and hauling of the dancers through the space. While there is certainly an element of what we know as “Cunningham dancing,” what makes this unusual is its sense of interpersonal play between the dancers. It also has an incredible set by Bruce Nauman, which is a row of oscillating fans between the dance and the audience creating a barrier which the audience must look through to see the dance.

In what way do you think Merce Cunningham's dance is contemporary, current, today? Merce decentralized the stage, giving the body an infinite number of centers and facings. We are all still dealing with the repercussions of that kind of decentralization both on the stage and in contemporary culture.

Why do you think contemporary choreographers are so interested in today's notions of dance history, tradition, heritage? I can’t speak for other choreographers, but I created the Bloodlines project 5 years ago because a generation of great thinkers was passing away. Revolutionary artists that challenged the possibilities of what dance can be and how we perceive it. I felt that it was crucial to begin restaging their works while there were still dancers who had touched these masters personally so that transmission could be body to body. Going back to some of these great landmark works in the history of postmodernism is like re-reading great works of literature, but this time I get to do it with a lifetime of experience under my belt. Understanding where we came from evolved has become incredibly important to me in understanding where I am today.

How does American Landscapes enter into dialogue with this dance story? The assumptions and basis for my compositional field in American Landscapes have been looked at through the lens of historical works I have been restaging through Bloodlines over the last 5 years. Because I see American Landscapes as a series of conversations with American culture about how space is shaped, reexamining my compositional techniques, many of them brokered through the lens of the Judson artist has been a crucial element of the works creation.

http://www.maculture.fr/entretiens/stephen-petronio-bloodlines/ 

Photo by Ian Douglas of Stephen Petronio Company in Tread (1970) by Merce Cunningham.

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About to open London! See their latest post! And this #Repost @ifthedancer ・・・ We are thrilled to share New York Times lead dance critic @alastair.macaulay’s instagram post/review of #IftheDancer Dances! ・・・ Nicholas Sciscione and Melissa Toogood in Merce Cunningham’s “RainForest” as danced in 2016 by the Stephen Petronio Dance Company in its Bloodlines project, tracing the choreographic forerunners to whom Petronio is indebted. “RainForest” (1968) is famous for its decor of Andy Warhol helium-filled silver pillows and its strange, changing, feral intensity; I saw it many times with the Cunningham company between 1988 and 2011. On Tuesday evening, the Dance on Camera Festival gave the premiere of “If the Dancer Dances”, a new 100-minute film by Maia Wechsler and Lise Friedman about the process whereby Cunningham alumni taught “RainForest” to Petronio’s company. By focusing on the difficulties and challenges of this gestation period - interlaced with views of New York itself, a city in continual change - this film makes both Cunningham’s and Petronio’s styles remarkably vivid. The leading Petronio dancer Gino Grenek, learning Cunningham’s own role without ever feeling at home in it, emerges with an exceptional nobility (he has such quiet authority that you see why Petronio was right to insist on casting him); and Petronio, so warm in his welcoming of Cunningham outsiders and in his encouragement of his own dancers to embrace alien stimuli, is the other hero of the movie. Toogood, a brilliant Cunningham dancer of his final years who joined the Petronio troupe for this season, speaks of Cunningham with memorable emotion; Davalois Fearon goes through a process similar to Grenek’s, finding it hard to find herself in Cunningham. Members of the original “RainForest” cast - Albert Reid, Gus Solomons Jr. - speak vividly; Cunningham alumni involved in the staging - Meg Harper, Andrea Weber (who allows herself to be seen as almost comically over-perfectionist and anxious), Rashaun Mitchell - are vivid contributors. The title comes from a quotation that appears at the end. “If the dancer dances, everything is there”: Merce Cunningham (who died nine years ago today). (Cont

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A Portrait of Steve Paxton

By GIA KOURLAS Nicholas Sciscione dances a 2017 iteration of Mr. Paxton’s solo “Excerpts From Goldberg Variation.” “It’s about finding the Zen of being within the notes,” he says. Published: December 4, 2018 at 05:00PM from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2Ee1V0D via IFTTT

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A Portrait of Steve Paxton

Nicholas Sciscione dances a 2017 iteration of Mr. Paxton’s solo “Excerpts From Goldberg Variation.” “It’s about finding the Zen of being within the notes,” he says. Article source here:New York Times Arts Section

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Nicholas Sciscione dances a 2017 iteration of Mr. Paxton’s solo “Excerpts From Goldberg Variation.” “It’s about finding the Zen of being within the notes,” he says.

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SAUDADE - MOVETHECOMPANY

Some dances will just glance off you, making little impression at all; some will hit you full on in the heart and soul; and some worm their way into your consciousness like an chigger. Canadian choreographer Joshua Beamish established his MOVETHECOMPANY in 2005. His “Saudade” falls between the first snd last options above. Beamish has had some high profile commissions, including being one of Wendy Whelan’s four chosen partners in “Restless Creature.” To be frank, that duet seemed like a show-piece for him, rather than a showcase for Whelan or even an equal partnership with his illustrious partner.

Joshua Beamish in his ballet SAUDADE

Beamish’s “Saudade” at BAM Fisher in Next Wave 2017 is titled for a Portuguese term that means “a vague, constant desire for a reality that does not exist… the love that remains after someone is gone… a profound melancholic longing. To feel saudade is to feel a deep incompleteness and recognizing it as familiar.” The score, which could be characterized as turgid, is by Icelandic cellist/composer Hildur Guŏnadóttir. Its title is “Without Sinking,” and it is predominantly slow paced and instrumentally dense; it evokes the deep melancholy of the definition, a mood, whose shelf life can be short. Midway through the hour-long piece, the depressiveness of saudade is infectious.

l-r: Sean Aaron Carmonand Tim Stickney in SAUDADE by Joshua Beamish

Beamish’s eclectic style mixes modern dance quirkiness and ballet legwork. Getting from place to place invariably consists of walking. The movement is rife with high leg extensions and grand rond de jamb — circling an extended leg around the body. He’s especially fond of having the six men cradle each other’s heads in the crooks of their elbows. The dancers alternate being bare-chested and wearing pullover sweaters over jeans. When they’re topless, the movement is more overtly sensuous — grinding hips, half embraces, and rolling the ground — but it’s not sensuous. It looks calculated, manipulative, and devoid of real connections between the men.

Members of MoveTheCompany in SAUDADE by Joshua Beamish

The impression is one of a string of duets that all share similar dynamics, pacing, and emotional sentiment. There are groups passages that show Beamish able to manage bodies in space with craft. But the imprecision of unisons belies lack of rapport; it’s every man for himself. Mike Inwood lights the piece with a lot of variety, using footlights, for example, to cast the dancers’ shadows on the rear wall, so they can play with relative scale in a fascinating way. But there is almost never enough light to see the dancing clearly, which exacerbates the oppressiveness of the mood. The essence of drama is contrast, but here a sameness prevails among music, light, and movement that leaves us in a static state of dysphoria.

l-r: DavidNorsworthy and DominicSantia in SAUDADE by Joshua Beamish

The dancers (Sean Aaron Carmon, Lloyd Knight, David Norsworthy, Timothy Stickney, and either Nicholas Sciscione or Beamish) are all elite, garnered from prestigious companies, namely Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, and Stephen Petronio, no less. Their technical skills are flawless. But they don’t seem connected to the choreographer’s expressive intentions. In both the design of the movement and its execution, there’s a passive aggressiveness that keeps us from identifying with these allegedly lonesome men in their search for companionship and emotional and sexual gratification. Beamish  has failed to established real emotion in them or to evoke it in us.

Photos by Ian Douglas

Gus Solomons jr, © 2017

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In performance: Yvonne Rainer

DIAGONAL (1963) CHOREOGRAPHY: Yvonne Rainer LIGHTING: Joe Doran PERFORMED BY: Ernesto Breton, Davalois Fearon, Kyle Filley, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, and Megan Wright

TRIO A WITH FLAGS (1966/1970) CHOREOGRAPHY: Yvonne Rainer MUSIC: “In the Midnight Hour,” The Chambers Brothers LIGHTING: Joe Doran PERFORMED BY: Davalois Fearon, Kyle Filley, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Nicholas Sciscione, Joshua Tuason, and Megan Wright

CHAIR-PILLOW (1969) CHOREOGRAPHY: Yvonne Rainer MUSIC: “River Deep, Mountain High,” Ike and Tina Turner LIGHTING: Joe Doran PERFORMED BY: The Company

All Rainer works staged by: Pat Catterson

Photos by Julie Lemberger at The Joyce Theater

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An insider’s look... 

TREAD (1970)  Company Premiere

CHOREOGRAPHER: Merce Cunningham MUSIC: For 1, 2, or 3 People by Christian Wolff, performed live by members of Composers Inside Electronics - Seth Cluett, John Driscoll, Phil Edelstein, Cecilia Lopez, Michael Schumacher SET: Bruce Nauman COSTUMES: After the design by Merce Cunningham, recreated by Jeffrey Wirsing LIGHTING: Richard Nelson STAGED BY: Jennifer Goggans PERFORMED BY: Bria Bacon, Taylor Boyland, Ernesto Breton, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Ryan Pliss, Nicholas Sciscione, Mac Twining, Megan Wright GUEST ARTIST: Brandon Collwes

This performance of Tread is part of the official Cunningham Centennial Celebration.

Video by Blake Martin

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In Performance: Merce Cunningham’s Signals

SIGNALS (1970)

Choreography: Merce Cunningham Music played live: Composers Inside Electronics Lighting: Richard Nelson Costumes: Merce Cunningham, recreated by Jeffrey Wirsing Staged by: Rashaun Mitchell and Melissa Toogood Performed by: Bria Bacon, Ernesto Breton, Elijah Laurant, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Nicholas Sciscione

© Merce Cunningham Trust. All rights reserved.

Photos by Robert Altman at The Joyce Theater

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Signals in process

Signals (1970) Choreography: Merce Cunningham Live music: Composers Inside Electronics Costumes: Merce Cunningham Lighting: Richard Nelson

Dancers: Bria Bacon, Ernesto Breton, Elijah Laurant, Jaqlin Medlock, Tess Montoya, Nicholas Sciscione, Megan Wright Apprentices: Miriam Gabrial, Ryan Pliss, Mac Twining

Video by Blake Martin

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A Dancer’s Perspective: Learning from the past

The Bloodlines initiative does not only celebrate historic figures in the postmodern dance movement, but also traces the creative influences of Stephen Petronio himself. For some of the dancers, embodying his past helped them to find fresh approaches to his current work.

Jaqi Medlock was eager to learn Trisha Brown’s work, because, she said, “I know it's such a heavy part of Stephen's history. To just kind of get that end of the movement a bit deeper, it was exciting.” She explained that after embodying this part of his lineage, “the way I approach his work changed.”

Megan Wright saw learning Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A with Flags, as an opportunity to notice her habits in a way that she couldn’t in the “speed and density” of Stephen’s work. She felt that experiencing a process to “strip… habits away in a very focused setting,” could mean that “when I was in the chaos of a Petronio piece I had some recourse towards clocking when they came into play.”

Nicholas Sciscione also viewed Yvonne Rainer’s work, and especially the improvised game of Diagonal, as a way for him and the Company to revisit their tendencies and learn from a different way of interacting onstage: “I think it was good for this company to do because it kept a through-line of communication, and you have to really be aware what choices people are making, you have to listen, you have to be prepared to act at any time.” For him especially, he learned to find “a three-dimensional awareness of everyone else around me.” The task-based approach of Rainer’s work resonated for him in Petronio’s, and reminded him that there is value to “discipline in pursuing the task rather than pursuing getting a lot of movement in.”

Photo of Jaqlin Medlock (right) rehearsing Trisha Brown’s Glacial Decoy (1979)

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Excerpt from Curtain Chat with Wendy Perron: on Halprin

After one of the Company’s performances of the third season of Bloodlines at The Joyce Theater in March, 2017, Stephen sat down with Wendy Perron to discuss the works on the program. Wendy noted that there were two chreographer-created-solos on the program, one by Anna Halprin and performed by Stephen, and one by Steve Paxton and performed by Nicholas Sciscione. Stephen recognized that recreating these works presented a unique challenge, but characterized his intentions like this: “What I want to do is get the consciousness of their bodies back into our bodies and to give you portraits of these great artists.” They went on to dissect his performance on Halprin’s The Courtesan and the Crone, which Wendy observed had changed in tone a bit from the last time she had seen it performed by Stephen. Stephen explained that the piece itself is “about female sexuality and aging” and that, at first, he wasn’t sure about her choice for him to remount it. But as he rehearsed it and began performing it, he found ways to complicate its meaning for himself by being in a sort of dual state towards the end of the work, “deliberating between being horrified and finding some kind of power in my decrepitude.” 

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Excerpt from Curtain Chat with Wendy Perron: on Paxton

After one of the Company’s performances of the third season of Bloodlines at The Joyce Theater in March, 2017, Stephen sat down with Wendy Perron to discuss the works on the program, including Steve Paxton’s Excerpt from Goldberg Variations (1986) performed by Nicholas Sciscione. 

Wendy noted Nick’s unique performance: 

"I feel like Nick really captured that anticipation and launching into each [variation] in a different way, having a different musicality for each section.”

[stephenpetroniocompany]

Excerpt from Curtain Chat with Wendy Perron: on Paxton

After one of the Company’s performances of the third season of Bloodlines at The Joyce Theater in March, 2017, Stephen sat down with Wendy Perron to discuss the works on the program, including Steve Paxton’s Excerpt from Goldberg Variations (1986) performed by Nicholas Sciscione. 

Stephen spoke of the collaborative learning process and how important it was to him that this work was passed along:

"Nick is amazing and he's got a great eye. I can't learn from video but he can. I have a very strong sense of what Steve is thinking when I see him move, because I've known him since I was 18, so I think between the two of us we got there.” 

“[Paxton] is like my paternal source of movement and Nick feels like a son. And Bloodlines is very much about passing this information from one body to the next, as a kind of a living history as opposed to a critical history.”

Photo by Nora Thompson of Stephen Petronio and Nicholas Sciscione rehearsing Steve Paxton’s Excerpt from Goldberg Variations (1986)

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A Dancer’s Perspective: Learning from video

Nick Sciscione learned much of Excerpt from Goldberg Variations from a recording of Steve Paxton from 1986. Since it had been an improvisation, Steve had only done it this way once. Nick worked with Stephen Petronio and fellow dancer, Emily Stone, to bring this movement into his body.

“Emily is really smart and fast and she's really good at seeing the video and quickly putting it in her own body. I tend to get stuck on the tiny minutia details of what he's doing, and she's really good at taking the big picture of what it is and getting it out there and then filling stuff in.” – Nicholas Sciscione

Video of Nick Sciscione and Emily Stone practicing a section they just learned of Steve Paxton’s Excerpt from Goldberg Variations (1986)