Crossing The Line Festival - Jerome Bel

Jerome Bel (2021)

A defining artist of Crossing The Line since its inception in 2008, seminal choreographer Jérôme Bel opens this year’s festival with a career retrospective he calls “auto-bio-choreo-graphy.” For ecological reasons, Bel no longer travels by plane; instead, acclaimed Broadway actress April Matthis plays him, challenging the boundaries between art and interpretation, performance and archive. A blend of filmed dance documentation, monologue, and live restaging, this unexpected evening is both a survey of past creation and a gesture of constant reinvention.

Special guest appearance by Catherine Gallant.

Jérôme Bel:

Jérôme Bel was born in Montpellier in 1964 and lives in Paris. His choreographic work include Name given by the author (1994), Jérôme Bel (1995), Shirtology (1997), The last performance (1998), Xavier le Roy (2000), The show must go on (2001), Véronique Doisneau (2004) on invitation of the Paris Opera Ballet, Pichet Klunchun and myself (2005), Cédric Andrieux (2009), 3Abschied (2010), Disabled Theater (2012), Gala (2015), Tombe (2016), Isadora Duncan (2019), and Non human dances (2023).

Since 2019, for ecological reasons, Jérôme Bel and his company no longer travel by plane for creations and tours. Thus, Dances for Wu-Kang Chen (2020), a portrait of this Taiwanese dancer, Xiao Ke (2020), a performance created with this Shanghai-based choreographer, and Laura Pante (2020) were all rehearsed by videoconference. Each of these performers tours their piece in their home language, in their own country, by train.

The films of his shows are presented in contemporary art biennials and in many museums. Bel received a Bessie Award for the performances of The show must go on in New York in 2005 and the Routes Princess Margriet Award for Cultural Diversity (European Cultural Foundation) along with Pichet Klunchun (2005). In 2021, Jérôme Bel and Wu-Kang Chen received the Taishin Performing Arts Award.

April Matthis:

April Matthis is an Obie Award-winning actor. Matthis has worked extensively in the New York live performance scene. She was most recently seen on Broadway in the TONY-nominated plays Mary Jane, and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Off-Broadway credits includes Primary Trust (Pulitzer Prize 2024), Toni Stone (Roundabout), Help (The Shed); Fairview, LEAR (Soho Rep); Signature Plays-Funnyhouse of a Negro (Signature Theatre); IOWA, Antlia Pneumatica (Playwrights Horizons). In the experimental and movement world, Matthis has appeared in Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room at the Walker Art Center and Deborah Hay’s The Blues at MoMA. Matthis is also a company member with Elevator Repair Service since 2007, having performed in numerous productions over the years, including Baldwin/Buckley at Cambridge (Festival d’Avignon); The Sound & the Fury; Fondly, Collette Richland (NYTW); Measure for Measure (The Public); Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf (Abrons Art Center); and GATZ (Perth Festival). TV credits include “Life & Beth” (Hulu), “The Blacklist” (NBC), “Evil”, “The Good Fight” (Paramount Plus), “New Amsterdam” (NBC). Film: Fugitive Dreams, Ramona at Midlife.

Torya Beard:

Torya Beard is the recipient of APAP’s Inaugural CIPA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Producing.

Torya’s creative partnership with Ayodele Casel has been a significant collaboration. The pair developed various projects, including Diary of A Tap Dancer v.4, While I Have The Floor, Rooted for ALL ARTS’ Past, Present, Future Film Festival, Bessie Award-winning dance film, and subsequent stage production, Ayodele Casel: Chasing Magic, Freedom… In Progress for Max Roach 100, Ayodele Casel + Arturo O’Farrill. New York City Center commissions include Diary of a Tap Dancer V.6: Us, Where We Dwell, Rooted for the inaugural five-borough tour of New York City Center’s On The Move, and most recently, Ayodele Casel | Artists At The Center. Beard and Casel are Resident Directors of Dance Lab New York’s Tap Project and were co-curators of the Little Island Dance Festival. They also share a passion for arts education and youth development and appear in Variety and Lifetime’s ‘Power of Women: The Changemakers’ special for their work with A BroaderWay Foundation.

Some of Torya’s other projects: Funny Girl Broadway/North American tour and Waitress (Assistant Director); Jesus Christ Superstar: Highlights from the All-Female Studio Cast Recording (Executive Producer), and the 2023 Bessie Awards (Creative Producer). Torya is Artistic Director at Excellence Community Schools, Co-Founder of tall poPpy and Original Tap House, and sits on the boards of Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance, percussive dance company Sole Defined, and Raja Feather Kelly’s dance-theatre-media company, the feath3r theory (TF3T).

Catherine Gallant:

Catherine Gallant, (dancer, choreographer, teacher, curriculum writer, and filmmaker) is the director of Dances by Isadora which, since 1989, performs, teaches, and collaborates with dancers throughout the world. She has studied and performed the work of Isadora Duncan since 1982 and is a founding member of the Isadora Duncan Archive. Ms. Gallant performed in Jérôme Bel’s Isadora Duncan, which premiered at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival in 2019.  She has studied and performed the work of Isadora Duncan since 1982 and is a founding member of the Isadora Duncan Archive.  Her own work is performed by Catherine Gallant/DANCE which has been seen in the New York City area indoors at Danspace/St. Mark’s Church, Chashama, GreenSpace, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, American Dance Guild, and outdoors at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out.

Catherine was the dance educator at PS 89 in NYC for 25 years and recently retired. She and her young students were featured in the documentary, PS DANCE! She was on the writing committee for NYC Blueprint for the Arts in DANCE and is now on the faculty of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) and Hunter College sharing her knowledge and experience with a new generation of dance educators. She is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory and holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University.

Location: L'Alliance New York - Florence Gould Theater

Event Pricing:

Member Price: $50
Non Member Price: $60
Under 28 Price: $15

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