(Sensate is a durational performance—you are free to come and go within the 3 hour performance time)
How do we create boundaries—and meaning- with so much freedom?
In Sensate, choreographer Carrie Ahern allows her audience to follow their whims and move to where they are compelled. The audience is free to come and go within two performance spaces anytime between three designated hours, experiencing the dance from anywhere they choose in each space. The dancers construct tense psychological zones as they attempt to find an exit. Rhythm is a compulsion and a cure, pushing to devour the ferocity of the mind. In Sensate, the private spaces become public as individual experiences are absorbed by others in the room. Dancers Carrie Ahern, Donna Costello, David Figueroa, Kelly Hayes and Jillian Hollis perform for the duration. Composer Anne Hege (voice/electronics) also performs live with an original score that will bleed through the space; costumes by Naoko Nagata; lighting by Jay Ryan.
photo: Sarah Sterner
“Way down in the depths of an abandoned Wall Street bank vault, a performance to remember.”
– Carl Glassman, Tribeca Trib (SeNSATE was October Cover and Feature article)
“It’s a post-apocalyptic installation, the performers in raggedy fashions, convulsing like maenads.”
– The New Yorker | Sept 2010
“Both the joy and sadness of the piece come from watching dancers full of muscle and body, in close contact with each other and yet seemingly out of reach to us audience, even though we could reach out and touch them anytime if we chose to break our voyeur bonds.”
– Quinn Batson, Offoffoff.com | Sept 2010
“The total effect is mesmerizing. I feel myself moved enough to gently pat one of the dancers on the head after she basically collapses at my feet… A unique experience.”
– Judith Jarosz, Nytheatre.com | Sept 2010
“This dance installation, “SeNSATE,” takes place in an underground bank vault on Wall Street, reason enough to go and see Ms. Ahern’s dancers, accompanied by Anne Hege’s electronic score.”
– Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times | Oct 2010
“The ensemble work was complex and tense and some of it was terrific. We came out elated and wandered around Wall Street for a while - I hadn't been down there at night for a long time, and it was oddly magical; even the Stock Exchange was illumined in purple light.”
– Alan Sondheim, poet, musician, video artist extraordinaire
“Within the performance is a deep commitment, enslavement to something just beyond what the viewer can see. The paradox creates a space for SeNSATE to creep in and fill the mind.”
– Voyeur Performa
“If you go, you'll feel the hairs on your arms tingling....Ahern's choreography and the Bacchante-like performances of her fellow dancers – Donna Costello, David Figueroa, Kelly Hayes and Jillian Hollis – can often sizzle. They take to this work with feverish abandon and put their bodies – maybe even their sanity – on the line.”
-Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body | Nov 2009
“Theories about creation tend to take one of two routes, either there was always something, or, before there was, there was not. Sensate, Carrie Ahern's new work at the Brooklyn Lyceum, speaks strongly for the first of these ideas. ...I realize, on the walk home, rather than watching the creation of the universe, we are watching what is left after the world has ended. Sensate is disturbing.”
-Meghan Frederick, www.I DANZ.com | Nov 2009
“The whole experience is continually shifting over three hours and will probably shift subtly over the course of the five performances, making this one of those pieces that invites multiple viewing...Only by spending some time inside the piece do all the meanings of the word sensate seep in.”
-Quinn Batson, offoffoff.com | Nov 2009
“Last night I walked into Sensate mid-way through the second of three cycles and was immediately entranced and enveloped by its world, an other world both deep in the past and far into the future... what I believe makes the piece a complete success and so unique that anyone with an interest in dance or performance must come and experience it, is the perfect, full, and flowing use of the space.”
-Harrison Owen, Fingered Media.com | Nov 2009
“Moreover, the throbbing, gyrating and convulsions on view at a recent "Sensate"rehearsal won't remind anyone of "Swan Lake.”
-Philip Boroff, Bloomberg.com | Nov 2009
photo: Sarah Sterner
Video by Harrison Owen
PRESS LINKS:
The Vaults at 14 Wall Street
THE BROOKLYN LYCEUM
Infinite Body review | Nov 2009
I DANZ.com | Nov 2009
A Place to Stay Awhile
by Quinn Batson
offoffoff.com review | Nov 2009
photo: Julie Lemberger
Wall Street Supermen Salvage Dance Maker’s Nietzschean Tribute
Bloomberg News Feature article by Philip Boroff
Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- When New York dancer-choreographer Carrie Ahern had a falling out with the academics who’d offered to support her work, the market came to the rescue: Capstone Equities provided free rehearsal space in an underground bank vault near the New York Stock Exchange. “Sensate,” a three-hour “dance installation” ending this weekend at the Brooklyn Lyceum, was inspired by Ahern’s reading of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century philosopher who created the idea of the “superman.”
Nietzsche scholars in New York at first offered to collaborate with Ahern on the production and to help raise money. In November 2008, they asked her dancers to work gratis. “They asked the dancers to donate their time in the spirit of Nietzschean sacrifice,” Ahern said in an interview. “Their fees are a matter of respect. I was insulted that they would use Nietzsche’s work as a justification for not coming up with the money.”
Enter Capstone. Ahern, whose work the New Yorker magazine has called “striking and original,” applied for free rehearsal space from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which places artists in unused commercial space. For two years, closely held Capstone has lent LMCC the vault in the basement of 14 Wall Street, a space totaling 22,000 square feet. The choreographer, four performers and a composer rehearsed about 260 hours there, saving her about $5,000.“It was important aid,” Ahern said, adding that the vault had proven to be an artistic as well as financial plus. “You can do so many things in it,” she said. “It’s much more malleable than other space.”
Cheaper to produce than a Broadway show, dance’s lower profile and smaller audience make fundraising especially difficult.“Even for established artists there aren’t a lot of funding sources,” said Andrea Sholler, executive director of Dance Theater Workshop, a downtown Manhattan venue. Moreover, the throbbing, gyrating and convulsions on view at a recent “Sensate” rehearsal won’t remind anyone of “Swan Lake.”“If there is not movement people understand, they feel uncomfortable,” Sholler said. “It’s more challenging to the viewer than other art forms.”
Ahern started dancing at 11 in Milwaukee. After high school, she moved to New York, skipping college to avoid debt. She danced freelance while working as a waitress and caterer. Today, she teaches yoga and Pilates.In 2007, she was encouraged
to create “Sensate” by the Nietzsche Circle, a New York non-profit that brings together artists and writers to engage with Nietzsche’s work. After committing to help, circle members said they had no time for fundraising, Ahern said Rainer J. Hanshe, executive director of the Nietzsche Circle, wrote in an e-mail that he and his colleagues found Ahern’s $15,000 budget “exorbitant.”Hanshe, a Ph.D. candidate in English at CUNY Graduate Center, said he helps run the circle without pay. He cited in his e-mail “the very large fees for the choreographer, the dancers and a composer.” Ahern “refused to even talk about such fees and was completely inflexible in that regard,” wrote Hanshe, who co- edits the circle’s online journal “Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics.”
Ahern said she took no fee for herself and that the budget included pay for a lighting and costume designer and $2,000 per dancer.“It’s like, nothing,” she said of the dancer fees she fought for. She ultimately raised $17,000 herself through a fundraiser hosted by members of her troupe’s board.
At the Lyceum, audience members can traverse the two-level converted bathhouse and come and go as they please. Ahern said she sought a format in which performers and audience have unusual freedom. .As for roughhousing among dancers in the piece, Ahern said everyone has the capacity to be violent. “If you don’t recognize it, you’re more likely to act on it,” she said. “If we sublimate it, we are not living to our full potential.”
photo: Julie Lemberger
SeNSATE
Review by Harrison Owen
Nov 2009/ www.fingeredmedia.com
Last night I walked into Sensate mid-way through the second of three cycles and was immediately entranced and enveloped by its world, an other world both deep in the past and far into the future - the vocals and electronics recalled Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, the haunting soundtrack for the monolith’s discovery on the moon in 2001 while the dancers quivered and shook, primordial ooze - all physical sensation and biology. An impressive initial reaction, for sure, but what kept me involved for the next hour and a half, and what I believe makes the piece a complete success and so unique that anyone with an interest in dance or performance must come and experience it, is the perfect, full, and flowing use of the space. The Brooklyn Lyceum has a huge main theater, with a back balcony, and a smaller performance space above, separated by windows. Sensate uses both spaces simultaneously, with both the performers (five dancers and the vocalist) and the audience moving freely between the two - creating new, ever changing formations. Two different soundtracks bleed into each other, and both dance areas can be viewed from either space, though I was constantly aware that something else was going on elsewhere and therefore actively explored the space and its infinite perspectives. The piece is one hour in duration, but is run through three times with out stopping each night and the audience is encouraged to come and go, or stay, for as long as they choose.
photo: Julie Lemberger
photo: Julie Lemberger
Photo: Michael Faulkner
photo: Sarah Sterner
photo: Sarah Sterner
photo: Sarah Sterner