Push Up Something Hidden
Presents
Cartography of the Synchronous Telemtrist
A collaborative performance event
with choreography by Amy Lewis and music by Bill Wolter

Community Music Center, 544 Capp St., San Francisco
www.sfcmc.org

August 13, 2009 — When two artists embark on a collaboration, how do they decide which ideas will be most successful, especially when they disagree on nearly everything?  How do they manage to produce when they discover that even language itself is inefficient to express the concepts they would like to explore?  How do they both get what they want while still being open to compromise?

This September, choreographer Amy Lewis and composer Bill Wolter bring their struggle, expressed through music, dance, and text, as collaborating artists attempting to create a synergistic work.  Cartography of the Synchronous Telemtrist, an evening-length piece broken into seven short segments, is the result of a year-long process involving circular, inconclusive discussions, mapping, and music analysis.

Both Wolter and Lewis bring their disparate and singular aesthetic preferences to the performance.  For Lewis, this includes dance “maps” that delineate body parts, right or left side, rhythm, and joint action.  The maps are an exploration in movement, and what happens when information from one movement set gets passed to another, or what a piece of choreography looks and feels like with a non-working joint or limb.  They are also an example of how a physical, system-based document might influence a human body.   Each map is influenced by a music composition and information from the map that comes before it, making each one slightly more detailed, adding more and more movement possibilities.  The maps and corresponding choreography builds from isolated, sparse movement based on joint action into contrapuntal phrases moving through space.    

Wolter’s interests—on astral projection and synchronicity--are expressed not only with lyrics, stemming from the many discussions Wolter and Lewis are having about the overall concept of the piece, but also by a Neanderthal playing piano and a pun-driven game entitled Bro-Ball.  The discussions influence the last two dances as well, reflecting the artists’ breakdown in communication.  The movement begins to fail:  certain joints only move one direction, or do not move at all.  Here language does what it does best:  surpasses all other media in the realm of communication, however badly, as the body does what it does best, at least over time--breaks down. 

For two evenings, Wolter and Lewis bring their misunderstandings and disagreements, as well as their search for synergy inside of dissonance, to the forefront.  Wolter’s focus on meditation and trance-like states of being, paired with Lewis’ interests in systems and mapping, are reflected in a performance that is as much about differences as it is about compromise.  Despite the fact that the language they use is inefficient and broken, they come to an understanding anyhow.  And inside of their unrelated ideas, reflected throughout the work, are moments of Wolter’s beloved synchronicity.

The Artists:

Amy Lewis has been presenting choreography in the Bay Area since 2005, upon graduating from Mills College with an MFA in dance.  Lewis began choreographing as an individual artist, showing work at Jon Sims Center for the Arts, CounterPULSE, Shotwell Studios (Women’s Work), and Project Artaud Theater (West Wave Dance Festival, 2006).  In 2007, she founded Push Up Something Hidden, presenting the first season at Dance Mission Theater, as well as performing in the DUMBO Dance Festival, 2007, at the John Ryan Theater in Brooklyn, NY. Last year, Lewis created How Many..?, performed at YBCA Theater, for the West Wave Dance Festival, 2008.  P.U.S.H.’s second season, consisting of an interactive multi-media performance event involving sculpture, data-driven movement, audience participation, and live music, entitled Hate Log, premiered in October, 2008, at CELLspace.  Lewis has been the grateful recipient of two grants, in 2007 and 2008, from the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

Push Up Something Hidden uses the body to express the concealed, emotional desires of humankind.  By telling stories that convey repressed feelings, P.U.S.H. intends to uncover the emotional undercurrent embedded in life experiences, promoting compassion, communication, and freedom of expression.  Derived from either the creation of systems or personal and public history, Lewis’ work translates the private domain of perspective into the public domain of performance.  Perspective, how it came to be, how it defines meaning, and how it can be changed, drives Lewis to realize the possibility of assigning experience alternate meaning.  Lewis intends to create sensitivity to another’s opinions and emotional needs by promoting the idea that viewing the world from another place carries change. 

Lewis creates both dramatic, story-driven work, resulting from a background in theater (she holds a BA in theater from UCLA), and formal work that derives from the creation of systems.   

Bill Wolter is a guitarist, composer, multimedia artist, and sound engineer.  His music hovers around experimental rock, jazz, noise, new music, and all areas in between.  A restless collaborator who constantly seeks the most diverse and challenging musical experiences, Bill performs and collaborates frequently throughout the San Francisco Bay Area with a wide range of musicians and artists. He plays guitar and composes original music  for Bay Area jazz/rock/prog bands Slydini and Innerear Brigade, and has collaborated with other performance ensembles such as Reconnaissance Fly, SF Sound, Moe!kestra, and Double Vision.  Currently, Bill is working on musical game design for the Guitar Hero video game. 

Push Up Something Hidden is a fiscally sponsored project of Dancers’ Group.

CALENDAR LISTING:

WHO:  Push Up Something Hidden
           with composer Bill Wolter and choreographer Amy Lewis
WHAT:  Cartography of the Synchronous Telemtrist
WHEN:  September 25 and 26, 2009, 8pm
WHERE:  Community Music Center, 544 Capp St., San Francisco
TICKETS:  $10-$15 sliding scale
INFO/RESERVATIONS:  415-378-7900 or info@pushproductions.org
WEB:  www.pushproductions.org., www.sfcmc.org

Choreographer Amy Lewis and composer Bill Wolter present the fruits of a year-long collaborative process, including their misunderstandings and disagreements, to a performance involving the disparate and contradictory ideas of mapping, astral projection, and synchronicity.  While Lewis uses compositions and conversations by and with Wolter as the basis for a mapping system, addressing the limitations of both the body and language as avenues for communication, Wolter explores altered states of being, through music, a Neanderthal, and an obscure game entitled Bro-Ball.