lavaearthmovingperformance
LAVA is an award-winning troupe that develops and performs artistic works combining dance, theater, and acrobatics. Founded in 2000 by Sarah East Johnson, the company has built a unique choreographic language that incorporates trapeze, hoop-diving, handstands, wrestling, social dancing, contact improvisation, and other forms. LAVA members also teach a unique blend of acrobatics and dance to children and adults throughout New York City. The company has served more than 13,000 individuals through its performances and classes, all of which encourage us to investigate our physical, emotional, and social interaction with the world around us. The group has trained at the famed San Francisco School of Circus Arts, in addition to working with master artists in other forms including dance and theater improvisation, swing dancing, and wrestling, while developing new work through an organic process that includes open rehearsals, extended research, and intensive collaboration. Their work has been seen in some of the country’s most respected avant-garde venues, including in New York City at Performance Space 122, The Kitchen, The Flea Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce Theater, Spiegeltent, and City Center. LAVA has performed nationally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, Bard College, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, and at festivals and theaters in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, Michigan, Maine, and Jamaica. Their sold-out performances have received national attention in The New Yorker, The New York Times, MS Magazine, Fast Company, and Art in America, among others
LAVA’s New Evening-Length Work, we become
Brooklyn-based performance troupe LAVA has garnered tremendous critical acclaim for an “exhilarating” (Newsweek) and “amazing” (New York Magazine) artistry that combines dance, theater and acrobatics to push the limits of dance and the female form. Expanding upon LAVA's collaborative way of working as an ensemble, we become integrates the work of two equally eminent women artists from other fields: musician Toshi Reagon and visual artist Nancy Brooks Brody. Together, they have created a poignant and virtuosic evening about community and the delicate balance of harmony and revolution, separatism and integration. we become uses a diverse palette to explore the tensions and harmonies inherent in sharing spaces that are too small and trying to be alike (or trying to be oneself) within a group. The piece expresses various dichotomies: solitary vs. joined, individual vs. community, supported vs. encumbered, free vs. rootless. Read more about LAVA, Toshi and we become
LAVA is supported by funding from Brooklyn Arts Council, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Estelle's Choice, The Threshold Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, and donations from grassroots contributors (like you!).
we become was created through residencies at BRICLab, MASS MoCA, and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.
Johnson also hopes to impact audiences with Lava’s portrayals of remarkably strong, agile women supporting each other, literally and figuratively. Johnson explains, "There’s an opportunity to imagine the world in a different light when you see a group of women working together in a way that’s cooperative and empowered. It demonstrates examples of relationships that we don’t get to see very often." A classic illustration of Lava-brand teamwork is Johnson’s 2002 "Timberline," in which the dancers devise daring acrobatic strategies in order to pour water into glasses that surround two women. The dancers then concoct even more intrepid ways of removing the glasses, sans spillage. The camaraderie among the dancers here is palpable, creating a celebratory environment of female strength and friendship. "Everyone in the group is really different, but the way we train together creates a closeness that is very powerful," Johnson concedes.
AWARDS & GRANTS
January 2002: Grant from New York State Council on the Arts for Glimmer
January 2001: Grant from New York State Council on the Arts for Timberline
2000-2001: Grant from The Jerome Foundation
September 2000: Bessie Award for Lava Love
March 2000: OBIE Award for Lava Love
September 1999: Jerome Foundation and Heathcote Foundation Grants for Lava Love (The Flea Theater)
April 1998: Jerome Foundation Commission for the creation of Volcano Love (The Kitchen)
March 1997: Mary Flagler Carey Charitable Trust Grant for Live Music for Dance for Girls and Volcanoes
" If you haven't seen or heard of LAVA, the award-winning all-female acrobatics, trapeze, and dance troupe based in Brooklyn and you are in or near New York City, you need to get to the Brooklyn Lyceum post haste .
" The performers are constantly letting one another fall to the ground, casually withdrawing their physical support like subversive players in a game of trust. Acrobats aren't supposed to let one another fall. But people do it all the time .
"LAVA Earth Moving Performance...an exhilirating circus of women on the move... .
" Sarah East Johnson's thrilling choreography, in which six brawny women use acrobatics as a metaphor for emotional connection, flinging themselves fearlessly into feats of daring: two performers wrapped back to back in Ace bandages flip over like a human Slinky; dancers jump through hoops in intricate and accelerating variations and stack up in a perfectly spaced line of headstands. With a fluid video backdrop of Lava lamps and waterfalls, designed by Nancy Brooks Brody.
" Lava Love" is just your typical daredevil trapeze variety hula dance program. With wrestlers in dresses .
