O N L Y  H U M A  N

A choreographic project by
CBC – Christine Bonansea Company

O N L Y H U M A N

A choreographic project by CBC – Christine Bonansea Company

D e s c r i p t i o n

OnlyHuman is a solo inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphoristic volume Human, All Too Human.
The performer/ choreographer is investigating the stark contradiction between our race’s capacity for freedom and beauty against its most destructive and illogical behaviors. Created in collaboration with visual artists Robert Flynt, Yoann Trellu and with the composer Nicole Carroll, the piece is conceived as a departure point for a future series. This highly kinetic and virtuosic dance is a meditation on bodily images and stereotypes of self in the context of the environment – geography, emotions, social structure.
Conceived, choreograph and Performed by:
Christine Bonansea

Original Music Composed and Performed by:
Nicole Carroll

Lighting Design by:
Asier Solana and Solomon Weisbard

Photography by:
Robert Flynt, Sigel Eschkol

Graphic Programming by:
Yoann Trellu

Duration:
40 min
With Additional Group Performers (10 performers), version 60min.

V I D E O

C o n c e p t

OnlyHuman is a choreographic project that attempts to reveal the human nature and its intrinsic paradox. The piece is inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphoristic volume Human, All Too Human that established the relationship between science, culture and free-spiritedness.
Created in collaboration with multimedia artists and conceived as a departure point for a future solo series, this highly kinetic and virtuosic dance is a meditation on bodily images and stereotypes of self in the context of the environment – geography, emotions, social structure.

The body is displaced relocated, attempting to redirect itself to find its center, trying to take control over himself. Different physical modes of embodiment interact with the immediate environment, generating the choreography as from a series of selves. Explorations of potential stereotypical representations of the human body punctuate the evolution of the dance: the movements will create its own contexts, flexibly shifting the focus, perspective and dimensionalities within the internal and cohesiveness of the dance.The choreography emphasizes systemic modes of constructed experience and the paradoxes built into them.

The OnlyHuman project explores various states and images through the physical body that evoke the paradigm of what is human; from the emancipation and beauty of the human race to its absurd and vain behaviors that generate disconnection.

“The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow”. Nietzsche
  • Performing Dates
    • 2018 - August, No Border Festival, DOCK11, Berlin
    • 2018 - April 14, DRAFTWORK, Danspace, NYC OnlyHuman Excerpt
    • 2018 - March 28, Plovdiv – Bulgaria | Spotlight: USA- American Dance Abroad http://.www.spotlightusa.org/onlyhuman/
    • 2018 - Feb 7, New York USA – New York Live Arts Studio performance – fundraising event showcase
    • 2018 - January 27-28, FRESH Festival 
    • 2017 - American Dance Abroad Delegate Performances – work in Progress
    • 2017 - October 18 2017, PAMS, Pop stage – Seoul 
    • 2017 - August 12-13 and 18-19, DOCK11 – Berlin
Work in Progress:
JACK showcase, Jan 5-7, 2017 (30min)
Judson Church March 13, 2017 (15min)

Residency:
Earthdance creative Residency, Feb 2017
DANSOMETRE, Vevey, 2018
Ucross Foundation 2018
Dance Italia S.P.A.M rete

Production:
Christine Bonansea Company
Co-production DOCK11

GRANT:
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council

A R T I S T S

  • Christine Bonansea

    Christine bonansea is a New York-based dancer and choreographer with over 17 years of international experience in conceiving, directing/choreographing and performing movement-based works. She creates performances, installations, and films. She is the Artistic Director of Christine Bonansea Company, founded in 2010. Defined by expressive, virtuosic, improvisation-driven movement, her work inhabits an experimental, interdisciplinary, and collaborative environment in which other media – theater, video, visual art and design, spoken word, and music – play an important and integral part. Having studied Modern Literature at Paris’ La Sorbonne, she cites writers and philosophers as major influences.


    Bonansea studied dance with such luminaries as Regine Chopinot, Catherine Diverres, Mathilde Monnier, Ralph Lemon, Anna Halprin, Nancy Stark Smith, Nita Little. She had the pleasure to collaborate and perform with such artists as Catherine Galasso, Katie Duck, Sara Shelton Mann, Faustin Linyekula, Tino Sehgal, Yoshiko Chuma.


    In New York City, Bonansea’s work has been presented by Danspace Project, Dixon Place, and Movement Research at the Judson Church and JACK. Her dances have also been developed in art residencies and commissioned by numerous venues and festivals in the U.S. and worldwide, including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC Theater, San Francisco International Arts Festival, and The Joe Goode ANNEX (San Francisco); Headwater Theater Linda Austin Space (Portland); Atlantic Center for the Arts (South Beach, Florida); DanceMatters (Toronto, Canada); Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo, Japan); The Centre Nationale De la Danse – Paris and at DOCK11 (Berlin, Germany). Her last work has been seen at JACK and the Judson Church in NYC and at Earthdance Creative residency in 2017.


    Additionally, Christine is also an accomplished dance teacher in both professional / performative and therapeutic setting.

    Christine Bonansea Company has been supported by funds from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Dance Abroad, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the French Consulate of San Francisco, among others.

  • Nicole Carroll

    Nicole Carroll is a composer, performer, sound designer, and builder based in Providence, RI. Her work spans installation, improvisation, and fixed media performance. She is active as a sound designer and composer in theater, performs electronic music under the alias “n0izmkr”, and builds custom synthesizers and performance sensor systems. She is also a bassoonist, currently developing a sensor system for augmented bassoon. Other research interests include soft circuits and wearable sensors, and AV synthesis on mobile devices and embedded systems. Through her work, she seeks to reconcile the natural world with technology. Themes found in her work derive from reflections on nature, supernatural phenomenon, literature, and the human psyche. Nicole holds an M.M. and B.M. in Composition from Bowling Green State University and Arkansas State University, respectively. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Music and Multimedia at the Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments (MEME) program at Brown University.

  • Yoann Trellu

    Yoann Trellu is a visual designer – video  programming


    Born 1976 in Chateaubriand, France.


    My first medium was photography. I started working with live projections in Nantes, France, in 1999. I first used photography and slide projections, but I quickly switched to computer and video projection. I’m interested in real time video software and especially Max/Msp/Jitter.


    In October 2003 I move my base of activity to Berlin and started to collaborate with dance productions. Since 2004 I worked on 50 stage productions with more than 10 different directors in Europe, USA and Asia. I create imagery as well as project-specific multimedia software.


    My main themes are

    •  Transformation, abstraction of an image.
    • Geometry and the idea that shapes and colors can tell stories.
    • The relationship between image and sound: what sound can change in the perception of an image and vice-versa.
    • Using automatic and random processes in order to achieve “computer creativity”: using the computer not only as a tool but as an artistic partner.
    • Improvisation, experimentation, surprises.

    Work selection:

    • Post-Theater (Berlin, New York, Tokyo), Konzert theater Bern (Switzerland)
    • Landestheater Coburg (Germany), Jess Curtis-Gravity (Berlin, San-Francisco)
    • Tatraum Projekt Schmidt (Dusseldorf), Ten Pen Chii (Berlin), Shang Chi Sun (Berlin, Taiwan)
    • Junge Staatsoper (Berlin), Theater Strahl (Berlin)
  • Robert Flynt

    Robert Flynt’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad since 1980. It has been shown in major museums, galleries, and alternative spaces, as well as in collaborative performance and dance projects.


    In 1992 he was included in “New Photography 8” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his work is in the permanent collection, as well as in the Metropolitan Museum, The International Center of Photography (NY), and L.A. County Museum, among many others His notable one-person exhibitions have been at Witkin Gallery, Wessel+O’Connor Gallery and ClampArt in New York, the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, the G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, and the Gomez Gallery in Baltimore. He has been included in over 50 group exhibitions since 1980. He had a solo exhibition at Heartgalerie in Paris in March, 2009, followed by group exhibitions in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Chicago, among others. In 2012, his work was featured in “Naked Before the Camera” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.


    Flynt’s collaborative projects include commissions from Brooklyn Academy of Music with choreographer Bebe Miller in 1989, and the L.A. International Arts Festival with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Dennis Cooper in 1990, and with Yoshiko Chuma on The Yellow Room, Daghdha Dance Company (Ireland) in 2003. Body-Scan, a image/performance project with choreographers Benoit Lachambre and Su-Feh Lee, premiered at Le Quartz in France in March, 2008 and toured internationally in 2009. In March 2009 he collaborated with Pavel Zustiak/Palissimo on Weddings and Beheadings, premiering in New York at the Ailey Center Theater. The pair received a Baryshnikov Arts Center residency in 2010 and premiered their new collaboration, Amidst, there in June, 2011.  This continues as Part 2 of Palissimo’s The Painted Birdtrilogy, which premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in September 2012.  His recent collaboration with choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, Love Story, Palestine was presented at La Mama ETC in New York in May of 2012.


    Along with numerous visiting artist and residency engagements throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Flynt has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Light Work, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Art Matters, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. Most recently he was a resident at Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain.


    Flynt’s work has appeared in numerous photo publications, anthologies and artist’s books. His 1996 monograph, Compound Fracture (Twin Palms Publishers) received a Best Books of the Year award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

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