FOURTEEN PORCHES
Artistic Direction: Stanzi Vaubel
Composition: Philippe Treuille and Stanzi Vaubel
Choreography: Melanie Aceto
Created in partnership with the New York Arts Program and in association with the Govenors Island Trust, this work was created for the fourteen porches and central quad of Nolan Park, Govenors Island. This work would not have been possible without the generous support of our kickstarter backers.
Positioned in between the drama of the metropolis and the merging waterways of NYC, the layers of this work extended to the very makeup of the ensemble built from a wide cross section of professional and amateur artists ranging in age, skill level, background, and experience. The performance emerged from the belief that a complex score can be written to involve a wide range of skill levels, including children, and that they will do more than just execute the work, they will activate it in an entirely unique and exciting way.
MAKING MEANING IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
July 10-16th, 2022, Alfred, NY. Over the course of a seven-month partnership, IF conceived of, developed, and implemented a weeklong festival. The programming was structured around an intensive schedule of daytime workshops and nightly evening performances. Building upon the April symposium "Re-Disciplining in the 21st Century" IF selected visiting and emerging artists to create and premiere new work and programmed evening events in a variety of locations around the university and in the town.
Visiting Artists Workshop Themes:
Bill Gilbert: Walking Constellation Maps
Melanie Aceto: Material Brainstorming
George Ferrandi: Be Coming Birds
Jonathan Golove: Learning Experimental Instruments
Sandy Silva: Rhythm, Voice, Movement
Kathy Kennedy: Echolocation
Vincenzo Di Nicola: The Manifesto in the 21st Century
Selected Emerging Artists:
Adalia Pemberton-Smith, Michaela Neild, Ben Zucker, Sari Hoke, Matias Homar, Dominic Giambra, Max Erwin, Thelonius Garcia, Jasmine Nagano, Ana Kim
HOW TO RE-DISCIPLINE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
April 25-30th, 2022. Montreal, Chicago, Buffalo, Malta.
The annual Indeterminacy Festival is a project by Stanzi Vaubel, offering curated, arts-based laboratories that challenge participants to connect across disciplinary expertise. This year, The Indeterminacy Festival was invited by the School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta, hosted in collaboration with Max Erwin and Ms. Sara Accettura who have brought their students and community into this years project with partnership from Step Up for Parkinson and Opening Doors.
The 2022 iteration of The Indeterminacy Festival was created in collaboration with Adelheid Mers, using The Braid, a multi-dimensional facilitation instrument Mers has developed, as a point of departure. Focusing on the question "How do you work?" Vaubel and Mers worked with festival collaborators to explore their individual methodologies. During the festival these artists will share these methods with us: Bill Gilbert: Walking Constellation Maps, Vincenzo Di Nicola: The Manifesto in the 21st Century, Brian Kavanaugh: Studio Forward Method, Kathy Kennedy: Echolocation, Jonathan Golove + Carmit Zori: How to Phrase Emotion, Michaela Neild: Embodied Tools for Interdependence, Melanie Aceto: Material Brainstorming, Ben Zucker: Composing the 'where' of Music, Jesse Stewart: We are all Musicians, Sandy Silva: Pulse, Alanna Kraaijeveld: Fighting Monkey Practice
CREATING AN OPEN SYSTEM
February 27, 2020. Montreal Canada. Created in collaboration with conductor Guillaume Bourgogne and the students of his improvisation course at McGill University's Schulich School of Music, the event brought together students and faculty from McGill and Concordia University to perform alongside local and international artists. In co-partnership with the Fulbright Foundation and La Sala Rossa.
PASTFUTURE/FUTUREPAST
May 15-18th, 2019. Co-Produced by sarah jm kolberg, and hosted at The Penn Dixie Fossil Park and Nature Preserve. In collaboration with the Physics, Geology, Engineering, Dance, and Music Departments at University at Buffalo alongside local partners: The Parkinson Dance Ensemble, Buffalo String Works, Starlight Studios, 5 Loaves Farms, Cradle Beach and Our Lady of Hope Youth Choir. Collaborators learned about sound, electromagnetic, and gravitational waves, developing strategies to perform these waves as music and movement. The week of events included hands-on workshops, film screenings, lectures, and performances with local and international guests around the festival theme. Sponsors included: Penn Dixie Fossil Park, Pierre McAloon Award, John and Shelley McKendry, and UB Media Study.
Uncertainty (2017)
May 17-18, 2017. Staged at Silo City, Buffalo NY. Large inflatable plastic bubbles were designed, manufactured, and installed inside a complex of grain silos, becoming "a space within a space." Architectural design by Justina Dziama, choreography Jenna Del Monte and Courtney Barrow, sound and lighting design by John Shotwell and Indigo Productions, with collaboration from The Indeterminacy Ensemble, musical composition by Lucas Segall, with collaboration from: The Parkinson Dance Ensemble, fundraising and media support via the Mark Diamond Research Fund, Techne Institute, Indiegogo crowdfunding coordinated and managed by students of the Arts Management at UB, class of 2017.
To view a short documentary on the festival click here.
EMERGENCE
May 15-18th, 2018. Co-Produced by sarah jm kolberg. Hosted at Silo City in Buffalo NY. Workshops presented in partnership with Techne Institute for Arts and Emerging Technologies, with visiting international artists Sophie Krier (Netherlands), Aurelien Gamboni (Switzerland), Sandrine Teixido (Brazil), Stephane Verlet-Bottero (France). Co-produced by Sarah JM Kolberg, engineering design and implementation Patrick Sears, Choreography by Jenna del Monte, Melanie Aceto, and Kara Mann, aerial choreography by Nina Vega-Westhoff, Physics advisor Professor Doreen Wackeroth, Geology collaborators Carolyn Roberts, Nate Marshall, and Jeremy Stock, projections by Brian Millbrand, architectural design by Justina Dziama, welding and fabrication by Chris Siano, on site support by Jim Wattkins with collaboration from: The Indeterminacy Ensemble, UB Choir, Our Lady of Hope Youth Choir, Buffalo String Works, Starlight Studios, Just Buffalo Literary Center, West Side Bazaar, Indigo Productions with advisory support from John Shottwell. Sponsors included: Arts Services Initiative of WNY, Mark Diamond Research Fund, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Just Buffalo Literary Center, John and Shelley McKendry, UB Media Study and Physics Department, NYSCA, and Silo City owner and founder Rick Smith.
UNCERTAINTY 2017
Staged at The Hi-Temp Warehouse. This immersive performance, invited musicians, dancers, choreographers, lighting and sound designers, theorists, and filmmakers into a maze of delicately entangled scrims, light, sound, bodies, and story.
Directed + Written by: Stanzi Vaubel
Cinematography by: Eric Coombs and Samuel Levine
Choreographic Direction: Melanie Aceto
Lighting Direction: Carlie Todoro-Rickus
Art Direction: Su Hyun Nam
Music Direction: Stanzi Vaubel
Sound Engineering: Dan Caruso
With Production Assistance from: Galia Binder
Performing Dancers: Christiana Buckley, Haley Bjorn, Sarah Lester, Olivia Bergmann, Galia Binder, Michaela Neild, Sarah Dodd, Angel Mammoliti, Monica Karwan, Cynthia Pegado, Alexandra Pawlowski, Amanda Klimek, Courtney Barrow, Brooke Laura, Nina Vega-Westhoff, Colleen McLenigan, Aurora Hastings, Lindsay Daniels
Performing Musicians: Eric Vlesmas, Mathew Porcello, Brian Clark, Lisa Gagnon, Chang Park, James Prude, Luis Blanco, Hamed Zamani Zeshmarzi, John Slobodzian, Connor Sullivan, Lisa Gagnon, Nathan Marshall, John Morano, Stanzi Vaubel
We're Part of the City (2011) is part documentary, part music video. It's a map made out of six movements, in six locations around New York City. Each movement is constructed out of the sounds, interviews, and images found there. It lands where it does based on hearsay, reputation, nostalgia, or curiosity. From Occupy Wall Street to Coney Island, it constructs an auditory, visual and musical experience from the experiences found in the city.
This movement: Occupy Wall Street won Directors Choice at the Black Maria Film Festival.
May 17-18, 2017. Staged at Silo City, Buffalo NY. Large inflatable plastic bubbles were designed, manufactured, and installed inside a complex of grain silos, becoming "a space within a space." Architectural design by Justina Dziama, choreography Jenna Del Monte and Courtney Barrow, sound and lighting design by John Shotwell and Indigo Productions, with collaboration from The Indeterminacy Ensemble, musical composition by Lucas Segall, with collaboration from: The Parkinson Dance Ensemble, fundraising and media support via the Mark Diamond Research Fund, Techne Institute, Indiegogo crowdfunding coordinated and managed by students of the Arts Management at UB, class of 2017.
To view a short documentary on the festival click here.
Indeterminacy Festival On Tour (2017)
2017 The Indeterminacy Festival, On Tour, (June-August), bringing the Indeterminacy Method to cities around the country. Facilitated workshops and events with community groups in Flint Michigan, Omaha Nebraska, and Iowa City. Sponsors included: Public Space One, KANEKO, and Free City Festival.
THE GIFT
Chicago Public Radio presents The Gift produced by Stanzi Vaubel and curated by Rachel Jamison Webster. This project was a collaboration with UniVerse of Poetry, a station partner and 501(c)3 organization that aims to celebrate poets from every nation in the world. Each piece drops us into a poets’ inner life, reminding us of the gift of being human among others. Interviews with poets: Joy Harjo, Lois Lowery, Linda Hogan, Kwame Dawes, Stuart Dybek, Jay Ponteri. Great books series include: T.S. Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Mary Shelley. Listen here.