MANCC Welcomes Monica Bill Barnes

Monica Bill Barnes (NY) FSU Alumnus Choreographic Fellow | March 14 – 27, 2013

Monica Bill Barnes will continue to refine an evening length show with Ira Glass, Host and Executive Producer of public radio’s This American Life Glass and Barnes’ long time collaborator Anna Bass. The evening includes text and commentary by Glass, alongside Barnes’ work-in-progress Luster, and Suddenly Summer Somewhere (developed during Monica’s 2007 MANCC Choreographic Fellowship).

Barnes says “I am treating the two dances like short stories and source material from which a playwright and director will use to create a new play.”

At MANCC, Barnes and Bass will work with their Production Stage Manager to explore all of the related set components of the new work, while introducing Playwright/Performer Trey Lyford into their process assisting with this particular stage of the work’s development. The opportunity follows a year-long relationship between Barnes and Glass which included Monica Bill Barnes & Company performing on a live episode of Glass’ This American Life, which was shared via satellite to more than 500 movie theaters around the US and Canada. In describing the event, Glass said, “Afterwards, the most common question I was asked was ‘Who were those dancers?’ People kept coming up to me saying ‘I don’t like dance. I don’t go to dance. I want to see them again.’ Which, yes, is a weird thing to say about an entire art form, but the point is, they won a lot of fans that night and I think when people see a full MBB & CO. show, they’ll be even more wowed.”

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[tab]MONICA BILL BARNES is a New York based choreographer and performer. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Barnes received her B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California at San Diego and moved to New York City in 1995. She then created her company, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, a contemporary American dance company with the mission to celebrate individuality, humor and the innate theatricality of everyday life. MBB & CO. has performed in over twenty venues in New York City ranging from the DancemOpolitan Series at Joe’s Pub to Fall for Dance at New York City Center, and including three seasons at The Joyce Theater. The company has been presented in more than 30 cities throughout the United States and has been commissioned and presented by The American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Fire Island Dance Festival and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. MBB & CO. has received support from The National Endowment for The Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Recent new works include “Love, oh love” created for Parsons Dance and “The way it feels” created for The Juilliard School’s New Dances. Barnes was thrilled to be a part of This American Life Live! in May 2012 alongside her favorite radio show host Ira Glass and other fabulous guests. Upcoming events include encore performances of Working Women at The Joyce Theater in January 2013 and the company’s debut performance at The Kennedy Center in May 2013.[/tab]

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Monica Bill Barnes & Company is a contemporary American dance company with the mission to celebrate individuality, humor and the innate theatricality of everyday life. Danspace Project presented the company’s first New York season, an evening-length work titled When we were pretty, in 2002. MBB & CO. has performed in over twenty avenues in New York City, including three seasons at The Joyce Theater. The company has been presented in more than 30 cities throughout the United States and has been a part of festivals including The American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. MBB & CO. has received support from The National Endowment for The Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts – National Dance Project, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Manhattan Community Arts Fund, and The Fund for Creative Communities.

Major support has also come in the form of creative residencies awarded by The Joyce Theater Residency Program (2010-2011), Jacob’s Pillow (2009 Creative Development Residency), the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University (2013, 2006-2007 Choreographic Fellowships), Joyce SoHo Artist Residency (2005-2006), Sushi Performance and Visual Art (2005), DanceNow/NYC Silo Residency (2004, 2008, 2009, 2012), Acadia Summer Arts Program (2003-2007), and The Yard (2002).

MBB & CO. recently brought dance into the world of radio. In May the company performed in This American Life Live! as a part of the NPR radio show’s cinema event shown in more than 600 movie theatres across the US, Canada and Australia. Other recent 2012 events include the premiere of a new evening-length work, The Snow Globe Show, at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater as a part of DanceNow, a weekend of performances at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival curated by Doug Varone, a shared evening with Joe Goode Performance Group at FOCUS Dance at The Joyce Theater and a performance with Gotham Dance Festival at The Joyce Theater. The company looks forward to a new premiere at the American Dance Festival in June, performances at The Fire Island Dance Festival and Rutgers University/Mason Gross School of the Arts in July and their debut performance at The Kennedy Center in May 2013.
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Informal Showing

Barnes’s Public Showing is March 20th 12:30 in the Black Box Studio. Reservations are requested due to limited seating. To make a reservation, please visit Monica Bill Barnes’s MANCC webpage.

*Reservation Required

Please visit http://mancc.org/artists/monica-bill-barnes/ or email info@mancc.org for additional information about Barnes’s residency.

The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), at the FSU School of Dance, is a choreographic research and development center whose mission is to raise the value of the creative process in dance.

Images: by Christopher Duggan