Bridge Matter/The Reach by Kinesis Project at Summer on the Hudson

Bridge Matter/The Reach is described as a dance of echos, listening, how we bridge the cracks between us. Kinesis Project has an extraordinary ability to bring spectacle and intimacy into an environment.

This new work, placed in a historic NYC location, is a moment to be shared with our friends old and new, leading audiences along pathways, waterways and bridge views with gorgeous dancing, costumes by Rebecca Kanach with visual artist Celeste Cooning and the live music of Grammy and Obie Award winning musician, Johnny Butler. 

Bridge Matter/The Reach is a second collaboration with the research of geoscientist Dr. Missy Eppes and her colleagues, studying how our shifting climate is affecting even the bedrock of our earth.

Join Riverside Park Conservancy for Riverside Revue an evening festival under the trees in beautiful Sakura Park, featuring nature, neighborhood, and novelties! This sneak preview of our 2024 Summer on the Hudson season will feature local artists, businesses and nonprofits, with opportunities for hands-on learning and exploration. Enjoy botanical cocktails, an oyster bar and other fresh tastes of summer alongside live music, dance, performance and moments of surprise and delight.

This year, in lieu of a traditional fundraising Gala, we invite you to join us for this outdoor celebration with a chance to preview many of the local performers, artists and educators who help make our free public programming so special.

Johnny Butler is a Brooklyn-based, Grammy-award winning musician and arranger for his work on Beyoncé's "Love on Top." Butler received a 2022 Lucille Lortell Award and a 2023 Obie Award for his work on Heather Christian's Oratorio for Living Things (2022). Butler plays the saxophone, flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, composes, engineers audio, dances, and makes films. Butler uses a wireless microphone and handful of electronics to create vast soundscapes while dancing onstage, blending the music, the dancer, and the daydream.

Celeste Cooning is best known for creating large-scale integrated art installations. Aside from various exhibitions, her work adorns city parks, storefronts, special events, and the stage. 2013 marked the transformation of Cooning’s signature cut paper aesthetic into a permanent outdoor sculpture for the city with support from 1% for Public Art and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Bounty functions as a threshold for Jackson Park Perimeter Trail in north Seattle’s Pinehurst neighborhood. The stylized, ornate fronds function as a bouquet of sorts extolling the virtues of the Pacific Northwest landscape. Cooning’s 21’ x 21’ swirling and back-lit Seed of Life can be found on a central wall in the city of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Rebecca Kanach is a Barrymore Award-winning costume designer. In New York, her work has been seen in at The Lincoln Center, The Guggenheim, Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, La MaMa, The New Ohio, Joe’s Pub and outdoors in Riverside Park with Kinesis Project dance theatre. Regionally, her work has been seen at companies including The Arden Theatre Company, Opera Philadelphia,and People’s Light and Theater Co. Academic work includes Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and University of the Arts. As a skilled draper, many of her builds can also be seen throughout numerous productions in the region.

Rebecca is a co-founder and the resident costume designer of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, and a company member of Lightning Rod Special, whose performance of The Appointment was listed as one of the New York Times’ Best Theater of 2019. She is a MFA graduate from NYU Tisch, USA 829.

Melissa Riker is Artistic Director / Choreographer of Kinesis Project dance theatre. She is a dancer and choreographer who emerged as a strong creative voice in the mid 2000’s NYC performance world. Riker is the Executive Producer of the EstroGenius Festival, Founder and Co-Director of Women in Motion and Founder and Collective Member of Dance Rising. Riker’s dances and aesthetic layer her training in ballet, modern dance, martial arts, theatre and circus. She invents large-scale out-door performances and spontaneous moments of dance for public spaces.

In 2022 Riker was the Artist in Residence for the Progressive Failure of Brittle Rocks Conference (PRF22) an international conference of Geologists, Geomorphologists and Mechanical Engineers, convened by Dr. Missy Eppes and her colleagues. In 2023, Riker’s work as a dance advocate is through Dance Rising and Dance/NYC as a community organizer and master facilitator of the Dance Industry Census Roundtables.

Martha Cary (Missy) Eppes, PhD, is a professor of earth sciences at UNC Charlotte. Her research interests center on natural rock fracture, soils, and landscape evolution on Earth and other planetary bodies. Dr. Eppes is a fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA) and a US Fulbright Research Scholar. She is a recipient of GSA’s Kirk Bryan award – their highest honor awarded for quaternary geology and geomorphology – and the American Geophysical Union Earth and Planetary Surface Processes group’s Marguerite T. Williams Award given for her “groundbreaking, interdisciplinary research linking rock fracture mechanics and surface processes.”

5:30pm: VIP Reception

6:30pm: Performance