CONTACT: GOLDHUBER@GOLDHUBER.COM

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TRELLIS

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THE ABRONS ARTS CENTER AND BIGMANARTS PRESENT

TRELLIS

APRIL 22 - 24, 2010 at 8pm
APRIL 25, 2010 at 5pm

CHOREOGRAPHED BY LAWRENCE GOLDHUBER
SET AND LIGHTING DESIGN BY GREGORY L. BAIN
NEW MUSIC BY GEOFF GERSH
OLD MUSIC BY SKEETER DAVIS

PERFORMED BY ROY FIALKOW, LAWRENCE GOLDHUBER, AND SIRI PETERSON

Celebrating his twenty-fifth year in dance, New York-based choreographer and dancer Lawrence Goldhuber premieres TRELLIS, the newest work from BIGMANARTS. TRELLIS peers through the standard love triangle: Roy wants Siri, Siri wants Larry, Larry wants Roy. Working without an existing narrative for the first time, Goldhuber developed the storyline through movement and music alone. What has emerged is an eerie tangle of secretive watching and desire. Following his 2008 work, Sleeping Giant, he returns to the Abrons with this exciting new trio with new music by Geoff Gersh and old music by Skeeter Davis.

The dance piece chronicles a passage of time through three dancers' (Roy Fialkow, Goldhuber, Siri Peterson) coupling and de-coupling. The architecture of two bench trellises serves as semiopaque walls through which the characters separate and observe one another in circular progression. The imposing structure represents an Eden for the dancers, while additional elements bring the outside world crashing into their reality.

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CLICK FOR NEW YORK PRESS PREVIEW ARTICLE

BY SUSAN REITER

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SLEEPING GIANT

MASS MoCA, ABRONS ARTS CENTER,

DANSPACE PROJECT, AND BIGMANARTS

PRESENT

SLEEPING GIANT

Artwork/Story - Daniel Duford
Direction/Choreography - Lawrence Goldhuber
Music - Tin Hat (Live)
Video Design - Janet Wong
Lighting Design - Robert Wierzel
Associate Lighting Design - Seth Reiser
Production Design - Gregory L. Bain
Costume Design - Liz Prince

Featuring:
Rhetta Aleong  Arthur Aviles  Lawrence Goldhuber
Alice Kaltman   Heidi Latsky  Brandin Steffensen

and Tony Wicks

AUGUST 12-23, 2008
Massachucetts Museum of Contemporary Art
MASS MoCA
NORTH ADAMS, MA
Creative Residency
World Premier Performance - August 23, 2003

OCTOBER 2-5, 2008
ABRONS ARTS CENTER-
HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT, NYC
Co-presented with DANSPACE PROJECT
New York Premiere

OCTOBER 27 and NOVEMBER 1, 2008
DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP
DANCENOW (NYC) FESTIVAL

Lawrence Goldhuber can be a witty, touching dancemaker, but he has often seemed overly caught up in the humor of exploiting his well-padded frame, to the detriment of his gifts. A new work, "Sleeping Giant," seems to be unlike anything he has made before - an allegorical tale of America's "rise, fall and rebirth" through the story of twin brothers. Mr. Goldhuber has a gift for finding intriguing collaborators, and here he has enlisted the graphic novelist Daniel Duford, the acoustic chamber music group Tin Hat and the videographer Janet Wong. And the fabulous dancers that he has gathered for this piece - Arthur Aviles, Heidi Latsky and Brandin Steffensen among them - are well worth the price of admission on their own. (Through Oct. 5.) At 8 p.m., Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street, Lower East Side, (212) 352-3101,  $20. (Sulcas)

Photo: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times                            click pic for NYTimes review

Sleeping Giant is an allegorical warning about the myth of America. 
From our small town values to our adventures in empire, the piece revolves around

twin brothers: the Superhero and the Sleeping Giant. 

One goes off to fight an unpopular war only to come back maimed and disillusioned,

while the  other becomes rooted in the ground to become a powerful underground force. 

The show features amazing artwork by Portland based sculptor Daniel Duford,

seven great dancer/performers, live music from the tremendous Tin Hat,

video by the peerless Janet Wong, costumes by the visionary Liz Prince,

sets by the wizard Gregory L. Bain, all stunningly lit by Robert Wierzel.

Sleeping Giant was developed, in part during the 2007-2008 Artist-in-Residence Program
at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, New York City.

Sleeping Giant was further developed as part of the Mass Manufacturing residency
program at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA)

The creation of Sleeping Giant is made possible, in part, with funds from the Danspace Project 2008-09 Commissioning Initiative with support from the Mid-Size Presenting Organizations Initiative, implemented by the Non-profit Finance Fund and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. 

Sleeping Giant is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The original and live music for this evening's performance was commissioned and
supported by The American Music Center Live Music for Dance Program.

Production support supplied by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

BIGMANARTS has received continued generous funding from The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

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CLICK HERE FOR VILLAGE VOICE REVIEW

SLEEPING GIANT has been made possible by the following donors: Bjorn Amelan & Bill T. Jones, Pierre Apraxine, Paul & Sheila Cohen, Sean Curran, Stephanie Goldhuber, Jodi Krizer Graber, Mary Gridley, Julie Landman, Claire Leffel, Ray & Fran Osinoff, Susan & Shelly Osinoff, Alice Palmisano & David Greene, Cesar Puello, Nicolas Ramirez, Nat & Bunny Ritzer, Beatrice Scherer, Kevin Scherer & Sharrel Vice, Sid Schwager, Cindy Sherman, Jerry Spano & Danielle Violi, Jack Sparrow, Rose Storin, Diane Storin & Jerome Goldhuber, Susan & Fred Tapper, Anita Tierney, Stephen Weinroth, and Micki Wesson. 

Thank you.

Special thanks also goes to Jay Wegman, Vincent Miller, Rachel Chanoff, Laurie Cearleys, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Susan Killam, Everyone at Abrons, Danspace and MASS MoCA, Laurie Uprichard, Patrick Corbin, Stephen Jones, Micki Wesson, Marcy Pianin at Mirrorball, Bob Bursey, The Foundation for Dance Promotion, The Talented Wong, Robert Wierzel, Gregory L. Bain, Seth Reiser, James Schriebl, Eric Notke, Paul Houtkooper, Hans Wendl, Tin Hat, the dancers, and especially to Daniel Duford whose work inspired this show.
 

NEW YORK PRESS PREVIEW

SLEEPING'S BEAUTY

Lawrence Goldhuber keeps art on its toes with Sleeping Giant
By Susan Reiter

Lawrence Goldhuber has given us pageants (a downtown "Julius Caesar" in which Lady Macbeth put in an appearance), cheeky comedy (his hilarious depiction of Gluttony) and skewed autobiography, always illuminated by sly wit and often by understated poignancy. His own cheerful, impudent presence is often an important part of his works, but while he's appearing in Sleeping Giant, his ambitious hour-long piece that premieres this week, he's not the major focus.

Central to this production, an allegorical dance adaptation of Daniel Duford's 2006 installation of the same title, are twin brothers-somewhat analogous to Romulus and Remus-whose lives take diverging paths and between them, as the Superhero and the Sleeping Giant, chart this country's rise, fall and rebirth. Duford described his creation, which was on view in a huge gym at Oregon's Marylhurst University, as "a meditation on heroism and mythology in America." In presenting his own take on the artist's vision, Goldhuber is similarly not shying away from larger concerns.

"Last year, while doing some grant writing, I decided it was important to be a political artist, to address issues in my work. I still want to make an entertaining show, but it has to have a conscience," Goldhuber says at the end of a rehearsal day. "America has become a very strange place to be living, a place that we can't really be proud of in the world." Recalling his time with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, where he was a notable performer for a decade, he remarks, "When I used to tour, it was great to be an American. Now, I wouldn't even know how people feel about America."

Sleeping Giant, which is co-presented by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center, reunites the choreographer and director with several colleagues from his days with Jones and Zane. The cast includes dancers Arthur Aviles, who portrays the Superhero, and Heidi Latsky, with whom Goldhuber toured as a duet for several years. Janet Wong, whose video design animates and manipulates Duford's rich images, is the Jones/Zane troupe's associate director. The artists' work spills across the large backdrop and also floats across a scrim and a series of screens that descend periodically.

"I decided that I wanted to use as much of Daniel's art as possible," Goldhuber says. He and Duford met when he performed in Portland, Ore., where the artist is based, and Duford inquired about sketching him. "The show is generated from his ideas, his story."

"All the art work is his, and the manipulation of it is Janet's. He came and painted the giant forest backdrop, and supplied some extra graphics to her."  Duford's artwork includes comic panels, in which the dialogue between the now-adult brothers finds its parallel in their onstage movement, as well as vivid scenes of an early American town, highways, suburban sprawl and more, which Goldhuber incorporates into a panorama of America past and present. The Sleeping Giant installation included images covering vast walls as well as 20 tiny wooden houses on which part of the story was depicted, and large terra cotta sculptures.

An August residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art provided an invaluable opportunity to pull together the complex production, which Goldhuber has been working on for two years. "I knew all the elements, but it was important to get everybody together."

Joining the collaboration was Tin Hat, an acoustic musical ensemble who created the vibrant, ever-shifting score (moving from blues to jazz to bluegrass to klezmer) for the work. Duford had sent Goldhuber one of their recordings because it was music he listened to while creating his installation. "I listened to several discs, and thought, this music has such a narrative built into it," the choreographer says. Thanks to a grant he secured from the American Music Center, Tin Hat will perform the music live at Abrons.  

Their distinctly American sounds resonate with the mythical American journey Goldhuber depicts in this work that is both narrative and allegory, with a nod to folk art alongside incorporation of up-to-date technology."

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JOSH GOSFIELD'S  SAINT GOLDHUBER

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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BARRY GOLDHUBRIS

IT'S THE STORY OF A MAN WHOSE EGO GETS SO BIG, HE EXPLODES!!

-----------------------"as scary as the nightly news" New York Magazine--------------------

PORTLAND INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (PICA)

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, AND BIGMANARTS

PRESENT

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BARRY GOLDHUBRIS

Written and Directed by
DAVID BROOKS AND LAWRENCE GOLDHUBER

Production Design by
GREGORY L. BAIN

Films by

DAVID BROOKS

Choreography by

LAWRENCE GOLDHUBER

Lighting Design by

ROBERT WIERZEL

Costume Designs by
LIZ PRINCE

Music: Schubert-Quartet No.14, Catalani-La Wally,  Morricone-Peur Sur La Ville, Lieber/Stoller

BIG logos created by STANLEY MOSS
Diganzi International Brand Consultancy

Major support for this work comes from The Jerome Foundation, MN.,
the generous funding of the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Inc., and The Harkness Foundation for Dance

This work has been co-commissioned by The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, by The Joyce Theater’s Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work, and by Performance Space 122, New York with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

This work was also made possible by space grants from the 92nd Street Y- Harkness Dance Center, and by the Chashama Free Space Program 2002

Goldhubris is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). NYFA is a 501(c)3, tax-exempt organization founded in 1971 to work with the arts community throughout New York State to develop and facilitate programs in all disciplines.  

Made possible by the following contributors:

Gretchen Bender, Neil & Philipa Clewner, Paul and Sheila Cohen, Celia Cooke & Jed Distler, Eleanor Danziger, Devon Engel & Julie Landman, Wilma Friedman, Keely Garfield, Ed & Susan Gitkind, Jerry Goldhuber, Stephanie Goldhuber, Sara Gordon, Jeffrey Goria, Mary Gridley, Eleanor Haray, Bruce Imber, Bill T. Jones & Bjorn Amelan, Julian Kaplin, Joan Katter, H. Jinder Khurana, Doris Klapper, Millie & Harvey Knecht, Robert LaFosse, Robert Landman, Claire Leffel, Lolita Lesheim & Matthew Panschar, Marvin & Alice Levine, Cara Levinson, Marijeanne Liederbach, Janet Lilly, Michael & Andrea Marsh, Eric Menkes, Ben Munisteri, Ray & Fran Osinoff, Susan & Shelly Osinoff, David Parker, Amy Ragsdale, Nicolas Ramirez, Odile Reine-Adelaide, Jeanette Resnick, Nathan & Bunny Ritzer, Bea Scherer, Kevin Scherer & Shari Vice, Benedicta Schwager, Sidney Schwager, Janice Shapiro & Susan Murphy, Cindy Sherman, Jack Sparrow, Janet Stapleton, Diane Storin, Rose Storin, Kathleen Supove’, Anita Tierney, Laurie Uprichard, Valeria Vasilevski & Phillip Trimble, David Weiss, Micki Wesson, Marian Williams, Wallie Wolfgruber, Janet Wong, Andrea E. Woods

Very Special Thanks to:

Robert Wierzel, Stanley Moss, Mark Russell (PS 122), Erin Boberg and Kristy Edmunds(PICA), Linda Shelton and Martin Wechsler (Joyce Theater Fdn), Julie Atlas Muz and Anita Durst (Chashama), Joan Finklestein and Edward Henkel (92nd St. Y), Robert Byrd (Jerome), Theodore Bartwink (Harkness), Jane B. Heilbron, Julie Ana Dobo, Elizabeth Gaines, Susan O’Leary and Michael Mohan at Fox Searchlight Films, Keely Garfield, Valentine Ortolaza, James Harris, Sunda Croonquist, Tom Eubanks for the original title, Joan Duddy, Dona Ann McAdams, Eddi Wolk, Claire Leffel, Ellen Jacobs, Bill T. Jones, Laurie Uprichard, Rachel Chanoff , Jerome Goldhuber, Diane Storin, Gretchen Bender, Mitchell Wagenberg, Janet Stapleton, Caterina Bartha, Paul Lazar, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Keen, and Gus Solomons Jr., Jane Hamsher, Rebecca Howard, Carl and Nic at The Puffin Room, Derek Lloyd, and Katy Eggleton. 

NEW YORK MAGAZINE DANCE REVIEW

Lawrence Goldhuber kicks narcissism up a notch

By Laura Shapiro

We may be having a cold winter, but with so much political hot air swirling around, it’s as if the whole nation were trapped under some vast, puffy quilt stuffed with rhetoric. The piety and patriotism, the hands on the heart, the earnest analyses and reassessments and scrutinizing of campaign declarations so vacuous they defy the laws of chemistry—thank goodness all this stuff provides one useful service, namely supplying a perfect context for Lawrence Goldhuber’s new theater piece at P.S. 122.

Everything about The Life and Times of Barry Goldhubris is oversize except the work itself, which is quite concise: It runs less than an hour and has a cast of one. But that one is Goldhuber, and the guy fills a room just by showing up. For years he was an enormous, unforgettable presence in the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; more recently he’s been choreographing and performing on his own.

Life and Times, written and directed by Goldhuber and David Brooks, is a kind of biopic in which he plays America itself. Framed by video footage on three screens, Goldhuber contains multitudes. First he personifies a mythological birth, diving into the world as the heavens shake; then he’s the star in a living-my-dream success story; and when that story ends in a locked ward, he becomes all the demons racketing through his own brain. Huge video images of his face assail him as he rolls on the floor in a straitjacket shouting, "Why does everything happen to me, me, me?"

That cry—Me, me, me—may be the most nakedly American moment in the piece. There are plenty of cultural references here, from the highway footage onscreen to Goldhuber’s desperate mumble, "Be all you can be I can’t believe it’s not butter it’s the real thing where’s the beef?" But more telling than any of these is simply Goldhuber, embodying a narcissism as big as the world. In a final, raging dance, he struggles to get his giant self out of that straitjacket, then bursts free singing "Only in America." It’s as scary as the nightly news.

THE VILLAGE VOICE DANCE REVIEW

by Deborah Jowitt
February 11 - 17, 2004
 

Lawrence Goldhuber is carving out a career in solo performance. In The Life and Times of Barry Goldhubris (written with David Brooks), he uses his own family pictures and his friends disguised as talking heads to spin a tale of his seriously flawed hero's rise from an immigrant family through flamboyant entrepreneurial success (bowling alleys and linked diners) to corporate greed and political chicanery, and finally to dementia. "Only in America," says a voice.

Brooks's films (along with astutely chosen pieces of music) skillfully enrich the story, provide locales, and emphasize points, beginning with the camera's heroic entry from outer space into the family that spawned this garden-variety moral monster. Goldhuber appears live in only a few vignettes: his bulky form nearly nude in a storm of glittering leaves; his light-footed dance as a janitor romancing a mop (Barry's granddad?); his bellowed speech about how to get rich and be loved; and his final terrifying sequence in a straitjacket. As he dances maniacally or struggles to get loose, on surrounding screens the heads of three giant alter egos argue in rapid-fire sallies and interruptions that build a suffocating rhythm. By the end there are nine heads, and some of the voices aren't Goldhuber's; in the mélange of rants, we recognize our own Goldhubrian officeholders.

In a way, I wanted to see Goldhuber live at more stages of his persona's career instead of grinning and waving on-screen, but the length and horrid intensity of the "how to succeed" speech and the psychotic struggle with his inner selves made their points in ways no shorter sequences could.

THE SUNDAY OREGONIAN DANCE REVIEW

Goldhuber, Uchizono offer festival magic

by Barry Johnson

The Time-Based Art Festival crackled into action Friday night with several important shows. Two of them repeat Sunday- a Lawrence Goldhuber performance piece about the disintegration of a wealthy man and a dizzying world premiere by choreographer Donna Uchizono.

Lawrence Goldhuber’s show was one of the festival’s most anticipated events, primarily because of his visits to Portland with Bill T. Jones’ stereotype-shattering dance company. In those shows, Goldhuber was the very big man whose portliness became an asset in the hands of a great choreographer.

Goldhuber’s solo piece "The Life and Times of Barry Goldhubris" mixes David Brook’s projected film images with performance bits by Goldhuber. The two don’t fit together especially well (until the end, at least), and the story they tell doesn’t track clearly. But there are compensations, primarily funny ones.

Brooks’ mock biopic of the wealthy but increasingly demented Barry Goldhubris is satisfyingly absurd, caturing the popular TV fascination with wealth, the mob, political intrigue and personal disaster all in one character. And the British narrator is a nice touch.

In two scenes after the biopic (which concludes with the idea that Barry has gone bonkers `a la Howard Hughes), we encounter Goldhuber as Barry. First, he’s an inspirational speaker whom the audience has presumably paid to see. His message: sell out; brand yourself; think sponsorship; fake vulnerability. It’s a good parody that he pushes to the breaking point--self-exposure and self-loathing.

Which leads to the second section. Now he’s a mental patient wrapped in a straitjacket confronted by images of himself on three surrounding walls, images that talk to him, argue with him, channel audio bits from the past (Nixon, Brando, Gable, among others), torture him. All the while, he wrestles inside the straitjacket trying to free himself.

Here, screen and performance mesh well for the first time, and "Barry Goldhubris" takes off.       September 14, 2003

GAY CITY NEWS DANCE PREVIEW

Lawrence Goldhuber is performing alone, but collaborating with others

DANCING BEAR

By BRIAN McCORMICK

Lawrence Goldhuber, the biggest man in modern dance, is perhaps most renowned for his performances with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He was hired in the mid-80s, a time he recounts, "when a lot of people were coming to New York to reinvent themselves."
He joined the company, in a way, to help himself come out.  "They were so radically gay back then," Goldhuber recalled.

His pride as a performer comes from that legacy, and from his contributions to Jones' seminal works like "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Still/Here." Goldhuber has been performing and been successful at it for a long time, including a much-praised partnership with fellow Jones/Zane dancer Heidi Latsky that dissolved sourly, and a ten-year relationship appearing in the "sinister slapstick" work of Keely Garfield. For this self-proclaimed "dancing bear," who has of late become a hot commodity on the Internet dating circuit, performing solo--despite appearances--is not about ego.  "It's horribly lonely to do a show alone," Goldhuber said. "Performing solo is lonely. Being backstage, waiting to go on is not so much fun." "But," he was quick to add, "it's easier to do a solo show than to risk another bad break up."

Goldhuber's latest creation, originally presented at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts (PICA), is a kind of behind the scenes biography story, a tongue-in-cheek mockumentary of the rise and fall of motivational speaker Barry Goldhubris.  "I'm a sell-out, a suck-up. Learn to fake sincerity and you'll have it made." These are the mantras of the imaginary Mr. G.

 Like his last show at PS 122 in 2001, "When the World Smells Like Bacon," humor and pathos combine to produce an unexpectedly moving and slightly sad portrait of a man. But unlike "Bacon," which was autobiographical--"an honest show," Larry calls it--this show is about a completely fictional character. "It's all a lie!" Goldhuber declared with glee.

While the real Mr. G. enjoys the newfound relative freedoms of working alone, he likes to collaborate on the creation of his works. Filmmaker David Brooks co-wrote and co-directed "The Life and Times of Barry Goldhubris." (Josh Harnett's first on-screen appearance was in a short by Brooks.)

The set features three screens, nine feet high by 25 feet wide, with the panels arranged like a tri-fold mirror. With material shot from three different angles, the combined visuals produce a cinemascope or IMAX-like effect.  "The film," Goldhuber said, "acts as both a backdrop and as narrative device for moving the story ahead."  When he is on stage dancing or doing monologues, the images are static. When he is offstage, the moving images are designed to generate emotional impact. Interview subjects, including Big Dance Theater's Paul Lazar as historian, Gus Solomons Jr. as CEO, David Dorfman as Barry's best friend in high school, and Juilliard's Elizabeth Keen as Governess, are presented TV style.

With a running time under an hour, the work is dense, tracing the character's history from his humble youth, where he dances an homage to Gene Kelly with mop and pail in an abattoir. The "Howard Hughes ending" portrays Barry in a straitjacket, with giant versions of his own disembodied heads shouting at himself, a segment he describes as "too scary for Keely's son to watch."

"My goal," Goldhuber said, "is to make an entertaining show. If it reaches art, even better."

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CONTACT: GOLDHUBER@GOLDHUBER.COM