New York City

Green Choreographers-in-Residence

ecocityIn December, Dance Exchange hosted Amara Tabor-Smith, our first Green Choreographer-in-Residence. Amara and her collaborator Sherwood Chen spent a week with Dance Exchange artists exploring sustainable food practices and food justice. Amara’s residency, which took place in our studios, as well as at sites like Eco City Farms in Edmonston, MD, culminated in a Thursday night HOME event featuring a potluck dinner and reflections on food and family. Visit Dance Exchange’s Facebook page to view more pictures from the residency.

Jill Sigman, of New York City, is our second Green Choreographer-in-Residence and will be in residence from January 28-February 1, 2013. Sigman will explore principles of permaculture and engage in hands-on work with small living systems, and this research will inform the development of movement scores and improvisational systems for use in her work The Hut Project, a series of site-specific structures built from trash. Sigman will share her methods and research in her HOME event on Thursday, January 30th from 7:00-9:00pm, and teach FRIDAY CLASS on Friday, February 1st from 9:30-11:15am.

10 Days of Climate Action – Call for Artists

This post comes to you from Cultura21

10 Days of Climate Action is an initiative of the Human Impacts Institute  to bring together artists, musicians and performers to install climate-inspired public works throughout New York City. In an effort to inspire New Yorkers to think more critically about our actions and their impacts, each day of 10 Days of Climate Action will present a climate theme and creatively engage the public in positive action around issues of climate change.

They´re looking  forward to submissions that push audience members to “think outside the box”, submissions from artists who intend to attack current and pressing climate issues through the creation of their work for a public setting and encourage them to find diverse sites and unique public settings. Each selected artist will be assigned a specific date to showcase their work during a ten day period in late September (21st-29th), as a part of the 4th Climate Week NYC, the annual global summit that takes place in New York City aiming to mobilize climate action.

Cash Prizes: 1st place – $500; 2nd place – $300; and 3rd place – $200

Submittal Deadline: 10am, Monday, August 13th, 2012

For more information, please visit http://www.humanimpactsinstitute.org/

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

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LEED-Seeking Theater for a New Audience Breaks Ground on Dramatic Black Box Building in Brooklyn | Inhabitat New York City

Brooklyn’s budding cultural district will soon raise the curtain on a new classic theater. Just Last Friday, construction started on the Theater for a New Audience, a Hugh Hardy designed flexible theater created specifically for the performance of Shakespeare and classic drama. Cloaked in a dramatic black box exterior, the LEED Silver-seeking building will seat nearly 300 and be surrounded by a gorgeous public arts plaza, creating a complete cultural experience.

via LEED-Seeking Theater for a New Audience Breaks Ground on Dramatic Black Box Building in Brooklyn | Inhabitat New York City.

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

Christine and Margaret Wertheim’s Coral Reef Project is another one of the CSPA’s favorites to date. It combines creative endeavors seamlessly with scientific thought and a social initiative. It brings to light issues of global warming and ecological sustainability without being didactic.

If you’re in New York city, you have a month left to view it at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. That exhibition closes in early January.

If you are in Washington DC, please visit the temporary exhibit on the the First Floor of the Sant Ocean Hall, OCean Focus Gallery at the National Museum of Natural History. It is on display through April 24th of next year 2011.

Margaret Wetheim’s TED Talk

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGEDHMF4rLI

At The Science Gallery in Dublin

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKhi0x4Ni41

A recent interview with Margaret Wertheim

View the video at Smithsonian.com

More information

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
The Institute for Figuring

Looking for Designers in NYC

We are creating a ‘sustainable’ theatre piece using green-friendly practicesfor a project in March. Our goal is to create almost a habitat. Looking fora scenic/ production designer who has expertise in either found objectwork, using alternative materials, or history of working with recycledgoods. The ideal candidate should have specific knowledge of where saidmaterials can be found within New York City and how to get them. Designerhas to be NYC local, and familiarity with the indie theatre community is a HUGE plus. Deep involvement in quick rehearsal process and timeto fully-commit to project is a must. There is a modest stipend & budge,and materials transport.

Email me at (dominic.dandrea at gmail dot com)
All My Best,
Dominic D’Andrea

ECO ART: Plastic Bottle Installation in NYC

ECO ART: Plastic Bottle Installation in NYC

by Olivia Chen

Sometimes it is hard to truly grasp how much waste we create as a society. That’s why NYC-based graphic design agency, MSLK is creating an installation that is an in-your-face visual of the amount of water bottles consumed in the United States. The installation uses 1,500 water bottles, the number of bottles consumed every 1 second — that’s 90,000 bottles per minute Entitled “Watershed,” the piece is meant to inspire its viewers to consider the collective environmental repercussions of drinking bottled water over tap. The installation is showing at the Figment Art Festival, open from June 12-14 on Governor’s Island in New York City. Click through to see a video of the installation’s assembly

Watershed Assembly at MSLK 5/24/09 from MSLK on Vimeo.

Environmental conscious-ness has certainly strengthened in the past few years, but plastic, whether in the form of a bottle, bag or other types of packaging, are still everyday objects in most people’s lives. Furthermore, most people aren’t disposing of plastic responsibly: according to MSLK, 80% of water bottles still end up in the landfill. Not to mention the toxins that exist in plastic. Bad for the earth and bad for your body, there is no excuse Especially in New York City, where the quality of tap water is superior, DRINK TAP

via Inhabitat » ECO ART: Plastic Bottle Installation in NYC.

Theatre of the Oppressed Founder Augusto Boal Dies at 78: Theater News on TheaterMania.com – 05/02/2009

546px-augusto_boal

By: Dan Bacalzo · May 2, 2009  · New York

Legendary political theater practitioner, director, and teacher Augusto Boal died on May 1, from complications arising from a long-term health condition, according to the The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory in New York City. He was 78.

via Theatre of the Oppressed Founder Augusto Boal Dies at 78: Theater News on TheaterMania.com – 05/02/2009.

KadmusArts Podcasts » Blog Archive » Interview: Michael Johnson-Chase

Michael Johnson-Chase is a former theatre professor, international program director at the Lark Play Development Center, producer and writer. After a stint as a solar installer, he is currently developing Green Collar Job training programs at Solar One, an environmentally focused arts and education center in NYC soon to feature New York City’s first net zero carbon classroom and performance facility.

via KadmusArts Podcasts » Blog Archive » Interview: Michael Johnson-Chase.

Thank Heavens for Local Law 86

This Post was originally posted to Mike Lawler’s ecoTheaer blog on July 19, 2007. We are reposting it here to share this ecoTheater classic with new readers while MIke continues to regain his health. You can read his blog about his ongoing battle with cancer, The “C” Word, by clicking here.

In New York City there is a law called local law 86. Passed in 2005, it has just now taken effect, and is responsible for at least one thing in the green theater movement so far: convincing (through brute force, I suppose) Theatre For A New Audience (TFANA) to build their new space in Brooklyn’s BAM Cultural Center to meet Silver LEED status or better. Local law 86 states simply that any non City building (whether new construction or renovation) that receives either 50% of its capital or $10 million or more from NYC’s treasury is subject to the constraints of the ordinance, which requires compliance with USGBC’s LEED rating system. (It may be of note, that ALL city agency buildings are now required to meet this standard.)

I say that it convinced the historically vagabond theater company because that’s exactly what TFANA Managing Director Dorothy Ryan told me just yesterday. “Our [initial] attitude was probably, well, if the up front cost isn’t too high we’ll certainly look at it,” she said. “But other than that [green building] is a luxury.” Fortunately, with the help of city funds, and local law 86, Ryan and the rest of TFANA have come to see the advantages of building green. “The really good part of this story,” Ryan told me, “is that the more we’ve paid attention, the more we’ve learned, the more that we’ve really explored this, [green building] is something that our team has really embraced in a very genuine way.”

Ryan’s admission of TFANA’s initial unwillingness seems to be further indication of a preexisting attitude in the arts. While the typical reaction to green building that theaters and their directors seem to have (so far we can cite Portland Center Stage, American Players Theatre, and TFANA–all initially opposed to green building) may be understandable for the frequently cash-strapped arts organization mindset, it is nevertheless slightly bothersome. 

So, what is it? In the simplest of terms, it is the money. Michael Broh, production manager of American Players Theatre (APT), told me recently that though everyone involved with their new theater project is happy to consider the green building option, “if it came down to building a less sustainable building, or not building at all,” he said, “I think we would build the less sustainable one.” It is here that APT and I do not see eye to eye. The benefits, in my way of thinking, of adding an indoor space and possibly extending their operating season and expanding their repertoire, are not worth adding another conventional building (or two) to the world to further pollute and contaminate. Isn’t the business of theater dirty enough? Must we add more of them? There must come a time when the artists (and, frankly, business folks) running the theaters own up to their responsibility to their communities the way they would expect any other business entity to do so. With the attitudes that seem to exist–the notion that there just isn’t enough money to build green, to build conscientiously–one can only come to this conclusion: the driving force behind these projects is nothing but self-interest, and perhaps greed.

Ahem.

I am convinced that if more theater managers were either forced (as in the case of Dorothy Ryan and TFANA), or just took the time, to consider the long-term advantages of building green, most of them would come to the same sort of revelations that the folks at TFANA did. Perhaps all municipalities can follow in the footsteps of local law 86–there is nothing like folks with money (be they governments or rich benefactors) putting worthy conditions on the money they dole out.