FSU Alumnus Choreographic Fellow Dayna Hanson (WA) spent time at The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in May 2013, as an artist in residence. During her residency, she and collaborators in residence, further developed her work, The Clay Duke. The hybrid work is of devised dance theater that blends details from the 2010 school board shooting in Panama City, Florida with investigations of Anton Chekhov and the vigilantism of the 1970s Death Wish crime film franchise.
The Clay Duke is a redemption play out of a contemporary news story that is strikingly banal, wretched and deeply human. Pivoting around a man who, bankrupt of personal and moral resources, seeks vindication for his hardships from a world that doesn’t understand his logic, The Clay Duke uses its own strange performance logic to discover hope in a grim story.
Bringing these various sources together under the creative umbrella of this singular play, Hanson hopes to paint a compelling, transcendentally ambivalent picture of humanity—one that, by attempting to understand society’s most damaged goods, encourages a hopeful view of the world.
On The Boards will host The Clay Duke World Premiere Dec 5-8, 2013.
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Dayna Hanson is a Seattle-based choreographer, filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist. Co-founder of dance theater company 33 Fainting Spells, Dayna’s work has been presented nationally and internationally since the early 1990s. Her dance films have screened at film festivals worldwide, including New York Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Dayna’s 2010 dance theater piece, Gloria’s Cause, was commissioned by On the Boards and toured North America in 2011-12. Based loosely on Gloria’s Cause, Dayna’s first feature film, a hybrid narrative dance film called Improvement Club, premiered as one of eight films out of 1,200 submissions to be screened in South By Southwest Film Festival’s Narrative Competition in 2013.
Her choreography was seen recently in the work of Austin-based Rude Mechs (I’ve ever Been So Happy, 2011) and Korean film director Tae Yong Kim (Late Autumn, 2011). Her new work, The Clay Duke, is inspired by a Florida school board shooting; produced by ArKtype, The Clay Duke was developed in residency at MANCC, On the Boards and West of Lenin and will premiere in 2013.
Dayna is 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography, a 2010 United States Artists Oliver Fellow in Dance and a 2012 recipient of Artist Trust’s Arts Innovator Award. Her work has received support from the National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, National Performance Network and others. She plays bass guitar and keyboards in Today!
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Collaborator in Residence: Thomas Graves, Wade Madsen, Peggy Piacenza, Dave Proscia, Sarah Rudinoff [performers], Andalyn Young [assistant director]
Filmed and Edited by Chris Cameron
Please visit www.mancc.org/artists/dayna-hanson/ or email info@mancc.org for additional information on Dayna Hanson.