USA Projects

Dear Friends,

Over the next five weeks we need your help to raise $9,500 to make the world premiere of Your Body is Not a Shark a success.

In 2010, Maya Barsacq approached Cid Pearlman and Joan Jeanrenaud to talk about collaborating with her orchestra. Out of these conversations came Your Body is Not a Shark. Choreographed by Cid Pearlman with an original score composed and performed by Joan Jeanrenaud, text by poet Denise Leto, and musical direction by Maya Barsacq, Your Body is Not a Shark is an investigation into the inevitable fragility of the human body.

We have been working on this project for two years and the world premiere will take place at ODC Theater in San Francisco in January of 2013, followed by performances in Santa Cruz at Motion at the Mill.

The Project

At some point in our lives, we each will experience a lack of physical capacity or a diminishing of social presence. This may come on quickly or over time, but it will come. Using “the stutter and the stumble” as inspiration for movement, sound, and poetic research, Your Body is Not a Shark asks the questions: What happens when we stumble, when our words won’t come out, when the body stutters? How can music, movement, and language evoke a broken wholeness?

In Jeanrenaud’s case, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 1998 prompted her to leave the Kronos Quartet with which she had played for 20 years; but, she says, it’s also what “empowered” her to become a composer. For Leto, the onset of laryngeal dystonia – a neurological condition that impairs the vocal chords – has been a source of artistic exploration leading to new ways of experimenting with the sound and shape of her poetry.

The Process

This is complex content to work with and the collaborating artists are committed to a rigorous process of investigation. Denise is writing six original texts for Shark. Each of the performance’s sections engages with a different poetic form – Tanka, Sestina, Sound Poem, Oulipo, and Pantoum. Joan and Cid are using Denise’s writing as scaffolding for meaning making, and the process has been fascinating so far, shifting the dance and music into new and exhilarating forms.

Cid is working with an extraordinary group of dancers, aged 18 to 63, including Sara Wilbourne, Sara Day, Molly Katzman, Nahson Marden, Damara Ganley and David King. We previewed the first sections of Shark recently and got great feedback from audience members on what we’ve accomplished so far.

The Collaboration

Joan and Cid have worked together twice before, but this is their first evening length collaboration. This is also Joan’s first composition for a group this size, and she will perform the score live, accompanied by seven principal members of Cadenza orchestra, and renowned percussionist William Winant. Award winning musical director Maya Barsacq will conduct the multi-layered score.

Cid and Denise met at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in 2008 and have been looking for the right project to collaborate on ever since.  Shark is an especially important undertaking for Cid, marking her first full evening of work presented in San Francisco in over a decade – since relocating to LA in 1999, and then to Santa Cruz in 2006.

For Denise, Shark represents the fruition of conversations she has had with Cid since 2008, her own poetic exploration into multi-genre work, and her desire for further collaboration and interaction with artists from a variety of disciplines. Working on Shark with Cid, Joan, and Maya has allowed for exciting and innovative forms of expression in her poetry.

Maya originated the central idea from which this new work grew. For her Shark is a personal and artistic exploration that has been ongoing for several years. When she reached out to Cid and Joan to collaborate with her on the project, she was looking to include new dimensions in her process of expression and investigation in relation to the themes presented in Shark.

As part of our outreach efforts we plan to host community engagement workshops with an ongoing advanced improvisation group, university students, and with members of a literary support organization.

What You Can Do to Help

We have had some success with grant writing and that accounts for 37% of the project budget. 35% will come from ticket sales. The remaining 28% will come from individuals like you.

The first performances are just around the corner. Your generous donation will cover a portion of the production budget of Your Body is Not a Shark, which includes:

-Performer, technical director, and light designer fees

-Theater costs (50% of our ODC Theater Costs are funded by the Rainin Opportunity Fund)

-Publicity/Marketing, postcards, posters, printing, distribution

-Sets, costumes, equipment rental, technical crew

-Video and photo documentation

At this stage of the game Joan, Cid, Denise and Maya are donating their time. If we raise more than our goal of $9,500, the additional funds will provide modest stipends for these collaborating artists.

Whatever you can donate will make a difference. We appreciate your support and your commitment to creating art for communities and community for artists.

Team Shark

Joan Jeanrenaud, Cid Pearlman, Denise Leto, Maya Barsacq

PS Your donation is tax deductible!

Cid Pearlman/Performance Projects is a fiscally sponsored project of Dancers' Group. Your Body is Not a Shark is made possible in part by generous support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County, the Rainin Opportunity Fund at ODC Theater, Motion at the Mill, and CA$H, a grants program of Theatre Bay Area, in partnership with Dancers’ Group.

photos: Beau Saunders