Stephen Petronio Company has been developing material for a new iteration of New Prayer for Now, a full company work scored improvisation that invites the local community to participate in the final performance. SPC is also translating Stephen’s latest dance film, Are You Lonesome Tonight (2020) into a proscenium stage work, and choreographing a new solo for SPC dancer, Nicholas Sciscione. The 2019 work titled American Landscapes is also available in both video and proscenium format. The Petronio Residency Center, an artist retreat in Upstate New York, has been hosting bubble residencies for dance artists from the community to safely develop new work while studios remain closed.
CURRENT PROJECTS
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NEW PRAYER FOR NOW
SPC’s 2021 season will feature the world premiere of New Prayer For Now, an original work choreographed by Stephen Petronio. This 30-minute piece is a convocation in movement— unadorned, direct and meditative in nature, based on presence in the moment, connection to space, to the other bodies working together, and to the viewing public. The concept activates disparate teams moving on their own trajectory creating multiple centers of action, sensitively interwoven with the other elements that fuel this event. It is an event that aims to take place both live in person and online on a specific date and time, but could also be converted to a fully virtual experience. Prayer for Now will be a hybrid piece, meaning that it will be a Petronio work in collaboration with Bloodlines Artists. Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Davalois Fearon, Yvonne Rainer, Rudy Perez, among others, will each create a phrase that will be taught to everyone’s company’s dancers to dance all the phrases together. This work will become a hybrid of live performances and online streaming as well.
SPC dancers create a core of eight dancers that operate as forces in the same space. This core can stand alone or can be interwoven with one or more groups of local moving artists/bodies of diverse age, skill and interest (up to forty participants). Participants will learn movement scores, guided by SPC members; these elements will be orchestrated into a roiling communal event.
Prayer For Now offers an event of connection in motion, of presence and of lingering hope. It calls for concerted and deep engagement in the power of movement, a time for bodies to join together in both focused harmony and deeply felt dissonance. It can embrace all kinds of bodies, trained and pedestrian, recognized and invisible, to show up to dance.
This work is open for a partner at different levels whether commission, producer, presenter, tour, etc.
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT
This film is available for screening.
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT
Concept and Choreography: Stephen Petronio
Dancers: Nicholas Sciscione and Lloyd Knight
Co-Directors: Stephen Petronio and Blake Martin
Editor: Blake Martin
Cinematographer: Matt Garland
Color: Company 3
Colorist: Parker Jarvie
Senior Producer: Gabriel Wakeman
Executive Producer: Ashley McKim
Music:
“Are You Lonesome Tonight” performed by Elvis Presley (BMG, 1960), composed by Lou Handman and Roy Turk
“In a Mirror” by Clams Casino
Costume Designer: H. Petal
Co-produced by Dancers Responding to Aids and Stephen Petronio Company
This work was made possible, in part, with support from Dancers Responding to Aids for the 2020 Fire Island Dance Festival virtual event.
Filmed on location at the Petronio Residency Center in Round Top, NY and Hudson Hall in Hudson, NY. Stephen Petronio Company and Dancers Responding to AIDS would like to thank Hudson Hall for generously allowing them to film on location. Special thanks to Tambra Dillon and Sage Carter at Hudson Hall.
BUBBLE RESIDENCIES AT PRC
In June 2020 SPC/PRC began to welcome dancers and choreographers back to the residency center under strict guidelines that considers the health and well-being of the residents, staff and our community.
Currently we are hosting limited retreats/residencies that require quarantining and testing prior to arrival, temperatures and a symptom check in daily and limitations on residents leaving the center and anyone else entering.
Meals are provided by PRC and prepared and eaten on site, cleaning of the studio and house is daily and extensive. All residents have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, except for couples who have been sheltering together.
We are grateful to be open, to be welcoming, even on a limited basis, members of our performance community and look forward to a time we can do this more extensively.
For more information please contact PRC Director Marya Warshaw, marya@petron.io.