September 22–November 3, 2016
www.crossingtheline.org
www.fiaf.org
The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York’s premiere French cultural center, is thrilled to announce the full program for Crossing the Line 2016, the tenth annual edition of its celebrated fall arts festival, presenting interdisciplinary works and performances by artists from around the world.
Select festival events include:
Mathieu Bernard-Reymond: Transform
Saturday, September 24 through Saturday, December 3
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue)
Monday through Friday, 11am–6pm; Saturday 11am–5pm
Free & open to the public
For French artist Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, photography is a tool for creating strange new realities. Created from photos of French hydroelectric facilities and the Fessenheim nuclear power plant in Alsace, the origins of the images in Transform are undoubtedly visible. But they also reflect other interventions; with superimposed layers, Bernard-Reymond has mutated his industrial landscapes into troubling poetic compositions.
BRIDGING: A French-American Dialogue on Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts
Various events throughout September and October.
During Crossing the Line 2016, the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations and FIAF will launch a new initiative exploring issues of cultural equity in the US and France. Artists Anne Nguyen and Rachid Ouramdane will join leading experts from both sides of the Atlantic in conversations that re-evaluate policies and practices in an effort to achieve genuine equality in the arts in today’s shifting cultural landscape. For details, visit www.crossingtheline.org.
Romeo Castellucci: Julius Caesar. Spared Parts. (New York premiere)
Saturday, October 1 & Sunday, October 2 at 3pm & 5pm
Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street (between Nassau and William Street)
FIAF members 25 USD; non-members 35 USD
Romeo Castellucci is one of Europe’s most radical and acclaimed theater directors and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Venice Biennale (2013).
For his New York City debut, Castellucci deconstructs Julius Caesar into a brief, phantasmagorical dreamscape set among the marble columns of Federal Hall, birthplace of the American republic. Shakespeare’s famous speeches are transformed into an almost unrecognizable meditation on mortality and meaning as they are delivered by statuesque figures whose bodies are quite literally turned inside out. Touching on democracy, rhetoric, and ritual, this visceral encounter is theater at its most disturbing and most transcendent.
Maria Hassabi: STAGED (world premiere)
Co-presented with The Kitchen
Tuesday, October 4, through Saturday, October 8 at 8pm
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenue)
20 USD
Following a recent live-installation at MoMA, Maria Hassabi returns to the theater to present STAGED. Four of New York’s most captivating dancers perform individual solos. Collectively, they form an intricate, shape-shifting live sculpture that abstracts the human form and its many capacities. With performances by Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, and Oisín Monaghan.
Dickie Beau: Blackouts (US premiere)
Co-presented with Abrons Arts Center
Thursday through Saturday, October 6 through 8 &
Thursday through Saturday, October 13 through 15 at 7:30pm
Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)
35 USD
For his first major US solo show, drag fabulist Dickie Beau conjures the wayward spirits of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and journalist Richard Meryman. In uncanny impersonations performed to a shadowy soundscape of their own voices, he merges reality with illusion and his identity with those of his idols. The result is an ethereal reflection on icons in exile and the lingering impressions they’ve left behind.
At home in clubs, theaters, and cabarets alike, Dickie Beau received the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award in 2014.
Artist Portait: Jérôme Bel
Various events throughout October.
Crossing the Line 2016 will feature a focus on French choreographer Jérôme Bel, with presentations of major performances The Show Must Go On (2001) at The Joyce Theater, Jérôme Bel (1995) at The Kitchen, and a new performance, MoMA Dance Company (2016), at The Museum of Modern Art. The series of events will begin at FIAF with a screening of Bel’s film Véronique Doisneau (2004), followed by a conversation between the artist and Associate Curator at The Museum of Modern Art, Ana Janevski. These touchstone works in Bel’s oeuvre provide an overview of his practice from the 1990s until today.
Jérôme Bel explores the relationship between choreography and popular culture, and dancer and audience, often using humor as a way to break the formality of a theatre apparatus. Part of a generation of choreographers who rose to prominence in the mid-1990s, Bel’s work has often been referred to as conceptual. He questions both art and contemporary dance by deconstructing modes of presentation and the notion of authorship while problematizing the historical prominence of technical virtuosity in dance. For details, visit www.crossingtheline.org.
My Barbarian: Post-Party Dream State Caucus
Co-presented with the New Museum, as part of the Department of Education and Public Engagement’s R&D Season: DEMOCRACY
Installation runs Saturday, September 24 through Sunday, January 8
Performance: Thursday, November 3 at 6:30pm
New Museum, 235 Bowery (between Stanton and Rivington Street)
Free with RSVP. Details at www.crossingtheline.org
Working at the intersection of theater, visual arts, and critical practice, My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade) uses performance to theatricalize historic problems and imagine ways of being together.
Days before the 2016 US presidential election, My Barbarian and special guests invite you to become a super delegate in an unconventional political convention. Prompted by speeches, anthems, and games, the audience explores group identities and casts votes in the absurd manner of a caucus. Your task—the promising and dangerous work of building “meaningful” consensus.
For the full schedule of events, visit us at www.crossingtheline.org.
