Created by: Cathy Weis
Music Composed and Conducted by: Matt Darriau
Produced by: Nova Productions, Skopje
Executive producer: Jovica Mihajlovski and GOH Productions, New
York
MOT FESTIVAL 1999 - Skopje, Macedonia
Performed by: Matt Darriau
Scott Heron
Gordana Dejan
Oliver Duev
Antonio Kitanovski
Tijana Todevska and
Cathy Weis
Stage manager: Mitko Arnaudov
Staff for Cathy Weis Performance Projects in Skopje:
Lighting Designer and Production Manager: David Herrigel
Company Manager: Lynn Kable
Development of MONITOR LIZARDS was made possible by the Doris Duke Fund
for Dance of the National Dance Project, a program administered by the
New England Foundation for the Arts with lead funding from the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. The project is
supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
An earlier version of MONITOR LIZARDS was commissioned and first presented
in New York City by Dixon Place with funds from the Jerome Foundation
and Community Assets, a program of New York Foundation for the Arts, made
possible through generous funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Macedonia
Residency and Performances are funded by Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Special thanks to Ruben Puentadura, Susan Sgorbati and Tony Carruthers
in Bennington. Special thanks in Skopje to SCCA, PARC Multi-Media, Ed
Wood Center, Skopje City Museum.
CATHY WEIS "MONITOR LIZARDS"
At times dreamlike, often startling, Cathy Weis' "Monitor Lizards" consists
of a series of pieces creating a changing storytelling landscape. Dancers
manipulate live technology, sharing tales, memories, and imaginings with
the audience through movement, light, sound, video and text. Audiences
see live performance and simultaneously view images technologically created
and projected by dancers moving on stage. The result is a juxtaposition
of the real and the virtual, dancers shaping magical, often humorous,
environments. Cathy Weis' choreography is a live interaction between dance
and technology. Ms. Weis often asks the question, "When technology and
the human body become (dance) partners, who leads?" Live dancers perform
on stage with their video images. Ms. Weis contrasts textures of three
dimensional bodies and two dimensional video images. CATHY WEIS PERFORMANCE
PROJECTS Ms. Weis began her career as a ballet solist in Kentucky, then
pioneered in the use of video in dance performance during the 1980's in
New York, where she primarily worked as a video artist in collaboration
with choreographers. Cathy Weis formed her own company in 1993 and began
to create full scale works. Her pieces have been commissioned by The Kitchen,
Dance Theater Workshop, Dixon Place and Performance Space 122 in New York,
as well as the Center for New Dance Program in Arnheim and the Museum
of Modern Art in Prague. In 1996 she received the prestigious New York
Dance and Performance ("BESSIE") Award for Choreography and Creation.
Composing music for the evening will be New York composer and woodwind
virtuoso Matt Darriau. Jazziz magazine named Mr. Darriau one of the 150
most influential jazz musicians for the impact he has had in bringing
Balkan and world rhythms to jazz. Ms. Weis and Mr. Darriau will be joined
live on stage by U.S. dancer Scott Heron and Skopje performers and musicians
and with whom they have worked prior to the Mot Festival exploring the
use of video in performance.
