Carnal Spill (West Coast Tour)

Concept and Direction: Carrie Ahern

Performed by: Carrie Ahern, Jennifer Chin and Elke Rindfleisch

Choreographed by: Carrie Ahern in collaboration with Carolyn Hall, Donna Costello, Elke Rindfleisch, Bennalldra Williams and Jennifer Chin

Text written by: Carrie Ahern and Vanessa DeWolf

*Original stories by each performer

Original music composed and performed by: Anne Hege

Lighting design and mirrored set pieces: Jay Ryan

Production Manager: Tara Ocon

Stage Manager: Kristin Dwyer

*These performances are dedicated to Janice Burgess*

A note from Director Carrie Ahern:

Carnal Spill is the second part of the Sex Status series, which seeks to expose what is considered most private about women’s experience in modern life. But there is no need to have seen Part I to be viewing Part II tonight, it’s completely its own entity. The first seed of this work was developed in conversation with Vanessa DeWolf, a collaborator from Seattle who also wrote some of the text you hear tonight. Vanessa specializes in words and movement together and she and I first worked together developing Borrowed Prey: Part I (my piece in the butcher shop) in 2011. But Carnal Spill really came into its own in 2021-2022 after our hearts were broken from the pandemic and from being deprived of human touch. And it has continued to develop since its May 2022 premiere- what feels like a lifetime ago now.

Other sources of inspiration include Uta Hagen’s “Respect for Acting” -especially her ideas about what she calls “substitution” and David Bowie’s song “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing'' from the Diamond Dogs album. Otherwise everything you see and hear springs from each performers’ reality, fantasy and someplace in between.

Thank-you’s

For our hosts, Sara and Steve in LA; Jeffrey and Cameo in Seattle and Christina in San Francisco-- thank you for opening your home and trusting us; Vanessa DeWolf for the imagination meld; Anne Hege for all the fantasy discussions and the tape machine; Naoko Nagata for smart consulting on costumes; my wonderful board: Janet Yearwood, Carey Green and Jeffrey Frace; all who donated to make this possible; Jay Ryan for your sense of adventure and all the different spaces you have lit so beautifully; Kristin Dwyer for being so solid; Tara Ocon for production magic, and performers--Elke Rindfleisch and Jennifer Chin--thank-you for crossing the country with this piece, for stretching yourselves sometimes way out of our comfort zone.

Biographies:

Since 2005, choreographer Carrie Ahern, Artistic Director, has used the medium of the body to investigate spaces of taboo. She has a reputation for extensive research combined with an ability to make viewers deeply uncomfortable and comfortable simultaneously.

“Ahern’s choreography is striking and original…powerful” The New Yorker

“Carrie Ahern isn’t one of those contemporary choreographers who makes a dance and moves on. She really digs her heels into a piece.” The New York Times

Sex Status (2018-present) is a trilogy that explores the porousness between modern women’s sexual and quotidian lives. Carnal Spill is the second part of the series. The first part, Sex Status 2.0 (2018), which uses Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist masterpiece, The Second Sex, as a jumping off point, was performed to acclaim in 5 private homes throughout 2018 & 2019. Part 3 will premiere in 2025/26 is a collaboration with composer Jen Shyu and investigates where religion and sexuality overlap.

In Fall of 2022, Ahern choreographed Anne Hege’s ‘laptopera’ The Furies, a one of a kind synthesis of electronic music, game track tethers and opera for Stanford University and Mills College, CA. She will also be a part of Hege’s second laptopera currently in development for 2025-26.

For her multi year project about modern death (2011-2016) Ahern learned to hunt, butcher and slaughter animals to learn more about the animals we consume and worked as a hospice volunteer. Public projects stemming from that research include: Borrowed Prey -the two part performance, Part I performed in a butcher shop; The Art of Burial -the fantasy burial experience performed throughout the US which she also developed into a TED Talk; Swaddling -the interactive installation swaddling adults; Composing Decay - the workshop taking participants through the process of their own body’s decay; and Pig to Human anatomy comparison— the hands on workshop with a butcher, butchering a pig and comparing the parts to human anatomy. http://borrowedprey.nationbuilder.com/

Ahern spent 2014-2017 developing work around currency, value and alternative economies with catalyst and producer Andrea Haenggi, co-producer Rob Neuwirth for 1067 PacificPeople in Crown Heights, BK. She created “gestures” or mini-performances for The Pop-Up Gesture Store (2014-2016) -a store that sells experiences not objects and accepts as payment only an experience in return. Pickpocket Dance Party (2015) was created in collaboration with Andrea Haenggi; In 2017 she was part of the EPA- Environmental Performance Agency (2017) collective with artists Ellie Irons, Christopher Kennedy, Catherine Grau and Andrea Haenggi. Her “weedy scores” were exhibited at the Schuylkill Center, Philadelphia and Transformer Gallery, DC https://1067pacificpeople.nyc/

Other projects include SeNSATE (2009)--3 hour, multi-floored performance installation; Covers (2009) -a durational window performance open to Lexington Ave passerby and collaboration with crochet sculptress Olek; and two evening length commissions from Danspace Project - The Unity of Skin (2008) and Red (2006). www.carrieahern.com

Ahern is a 2023 & 2018 BAC/ Brooklyn Arts Fund grantee. She was a resident artist for Project: Space Available, Seattle in 2011, 2011 NYFA BUILD grant recipient, recipient of an LMCC Swing Space grant in 2009/10, BAX space grant artist in 2007/08, 2007 recipient of a Fractured Atlas’ Creative Development Grant. Danspace Project commissioned Ahern's evening length works The Unity of Skin (2008) and Red (2006). Red was also commissioned in 2005 for the Guggenheim: Works and Process.

Jennifer Chin is a dancer, choreographer and teaching artist. She has performed and taught throughout the US and abroad, including Mexico, Guatemala, Edinburgh, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Finland, Croatia and Italy. She has been on faculty at The José Limón Institute, The Martha Graham School, Peridance, Montclair State University, and Brooklyn College. Her company has an ongoing collaboration with WADE (Wandering Avian Dance Experience), operating at the intersection of performing arts, activism, and social change. In addition, Jennifer choreographs for theater and opera and is a longstanding collaborator with MultiStages. LUMINOUSbody, transformative health and fitness, is her small business offering private lessons in yoga and pilates. Jennifer is thrilled to be part of the 2024-25 cohort of dance artists in residence at TOPAZ ARTS, Celebrating AAPI Dance Artists. This is her second collaboration with Carrie Ahern. Follow her IG@jenchindance.

Vanessa DeWolf, poet and improviser for nearly 30 years, has been creating works that intersect the visceral with the textual and the visual. She makes performances, zines, installations, ensemble and solo works. Her works have been seen throughout Seattle and in Alaska, Brussels and other locations. Since 1994 she's been a community instigator making work & encouraging artists in Seattle's underground diy realms of performance and interdisciplinary arts. She founded Studio Current with the mission to grow creative process, artistic practice and experimentation along with deep aesthetic dialog. Many artists incubated their works and working processes at Studio Current (including Alice Gosti, Gender Tender, Salt Horse and many more). She is always grateful to work with Carrie, her profound free-associative process towards the visceral nature of dance and the body. Vanessa is currently working on her first poetry manuscript, a merging of improvisational composition & the visual nature of the page.

Anne Hege creates musical worlds that invite an awareness of and attention to the body and our present moment. In her work as a composer, vocalist, conductor, instrument builder, and scholar, she explores the roots of musicality in the intersection of ensemble interaction, technology, embodiment, and expression. Her works have been performed by So Percussion, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Laptop Orchestra, Stanford Laptop Orchestra, Google Mobile Devices Ensemble, loadbang, Ensemble Klang, NOW Ensemble, Voce in Tempore, Newspeak, Piedmont East Bay Children's Chorus, Resound Ensemble, and Volti SF. Carnal Spill is Hege’s fourth evening-length score for Carrie Ahern since 2008. Currently, Hege is on the voice faculty of Mills College at Northeastern University and the artistic director of the Peninsula Women's Chorus. She performs regularly on her analog live-looping instrument, the tape machine, in her electronic duo New Prosthetics, and the laptop ensemble Sideband. Her latest work, an opera for laptop orchestra and live voices, The Furies: A Laptopera, premiered at Stanford's CCRMA in November 2022. For more information - www.annehege.com.

As a choreographer and dancer in New York, Elke Rindfleisch created a critically acclaimed body of work. She applied a raw, highly physical and emotional physicality to explore the edges of the body and our behavioral patterns. Recent personal choreographic explorations have taken her deeper into her voice and writing, as well as using ritual, Reiki, and deep listening as departure points for moving. In her professional life, Elke has applied the many facets of her creative, observant, body-focused, and healing touch talent in the forms of Reiki, tantric massage, sensual movement classes, lots of dialogue, writing, and improvisation, and also works as project manager in a pharmaceutical setting. She currently lives between Berlin and New York, and a little bit New Mexico. She loves travel and bouldering with her son. Working with Carrie and this incredible team during the past few years has been a tremendous pleasure!

Jay Ryan - I design stuff. Carrie and I met a long time ago at DTW when we were both younger and we have been making stuff ever since! I wish making experimental theater could pay the bills but it doesn’t so I design lights for high end weddings, fashion shows, corporate product launches and private parties.

Keep in Touch!

We send occasional updates when something new and exciting is going on. And you’ll be the first to know about the next chapter of the Sex Status cannon currently in development!

Our house music playlist, inspired by Carnal Spill, and created by Tara, please enjoy!