Kickstarter

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What is HUNGRY KITE?

HUNGRY KITE is a performance in which performers, images, and objects are all treated as possessing immanent meaning, perpetually in a state of potential, waiting to manifest.  The work intends to strip people and objects to their bare essence, presenting them simply as facts onstage. In this world, we see images that seek coherence, like words that strain to connect and become sentences.  Defying predetermined classifications, the performers and objects meet, exist, react, and interact on a stage where they are all equal; they wait for time to define their relationships or catalyze a change.  As our watching becomes gazing, and our experience of every moment is illuminated, the audience is invited to put aside expectations and exist in this space of potential.

Join me, Deganit Shemy in creating a transformative performance experience! For the first time, my company is combining dance with video, collaborating with an incredibly innovative video artist, Jim Findlay.  My team of creative dancers has been churning out a seemingly endless flow of ideas and movement material.  Longtime collaborator composer Jim Dawson is working on the sound score.  We are at a critical phase in which I have all the pieces; now I have the task of putting them together.  I will have two weeks of rehearsal to finish HUNGRY KITE before its NY premiere at the Chocolate Factory on June 20!

HUNGRY KITE history:

I met Jim Findlay while working on my piece 2 kilos of sea at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Jim had been working for the past few years directing his creepy futuristic black comedy Botanica.  With Botanica, Findlay, an accomplished video artist who has worked with The Wooster Group, Ralph Lemon and others, created a fanciful multimedia performance work examining our complicated and interdependent relationship to plant life. 

Findlay’s long fascination with technology and performance aligned with my curiosity to continue experiments in merging film with performance that I had begun in March 2011 as part of a residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in Tallahassee, Florida.  We met at just the right time, and this past April, we returned to MANCC to create HUNGRY KITE.

My Collaborators: I work with a group of remarkably creative performing artists from Greece, Czech Republic and the U.S.

• JIM FINDLAY, video artist: http://jimfindlaynyc.com/

• JIM DAWSON, composer/sound designer: http://snd.sc/K8Asv0

• DENISA MUSILOVA, REBECCA WARNER, ELYSSA DOLE, and SAVINA THEODOROU, performers:

HUNGRY KITE will premiere at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, Queens, June 20-23, 2012. 

What your donation will do:
Many talented people have already given their time, energy and resources to make this project happen. Currently, I am $2000 short of covering my expenses to complete HUNGRY KITE.

• I need to pay my amazing dancers for their work.

• I am missing some critical technical equipment for the video projections.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR PROJECT! I hope to see you at the show.

xo, deganit

company website: dganit-shemy.com

http://mancc.org/artists/deganit-shemy/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deganit-Shemy-Company/118162076194

Special thanks to the team at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography for the video, including Liz Saluke for filming, Chris Cameron for filming and editing and Jared Smyth for audio.

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HUNGRY KITE was commissioned by The Chocolate Factory as part of its Visiting Artist Program. Lead commissioning and developmental support for HUNGRY KITE has been provided by the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. HUNGRY KITE was in part developed through a residency at DMAC (Duo Multicultural Arts Center). Project Consultant: Andy Horwitz. Travel support has been provided by Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs.