Bridge Project 2020
BRIDGE PROJECT 2020
with Alyssa Boone, Lucille Jun, + Peter Kohring
February 6-9 / 7:30PM
Velocity
Online Program
Three of Seattle’s most promising choreographers will create three brand new works for Velocity’s Bridge Project 2020, which will premiere at Velocity’s Founder’s theater from February 6-9. This year’s Bridge will feature exciting new work from three emerging dance artists: Alyssa Boone, Lucille Jun, and Peter Kohring.
The Bridge Project epitomizes Velocity’s relentless commitment to supporting new generations of dance artists. Each choreographer receives the artistic, financial and administrative support they need to develop their work, in addition to a cast of dancers and artistic mentorship. In programming The Bridge Project, Velocity aims to enhance the artistic growth of the choreographers, and provide an entry point into the local performance scene for dance artists new to the community.
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Inspired by her own experiences as an Asian-American in the Pacific Northwest, Federal Way based choreographer Lucille Jun will work with her dancers to explore the privileges and limitations of the “abstract body.” Looking at how difference is read across the bodies of others, Jun will use dance to unpack and challenge audience assumptions about the roles of and signifiers of different bodies, and how our perceptions can evolve and shift over time.
Alyssa Boone, a recent Seattle transplant and Strictly Seattle alumna from 2019, will be presenting a new work deconstructing psychological processes and associations through a visceral engagement with the senses. Though audiences may remember Boone for her jaw-dropping solo at the beginning of Kate Wallich’s Strictly re-staging of Industrial Ballet, Boone brings a sophisticated and keen intellect to her choreographic process. Drawing on her own experience as a synesthete, Boone will explore what it would be like to unravel the human mind: creating atmosphere through a deconstruction of the fundamental psychological process of association. This piece will challenge and expose established assumptions, offering the idea that all we perceive is not necessarily real, true, or correct.
Peter Kohring’s “mollie the depressed dolly and other sad stories” looks closely at the diverse experiences with mental illness through a dance that unfolds between a collection of dolls. Specifically, Kohring began developing this work based around their own lived experience with mental illness. In the development of the piece, they have used props, movement and narrative to abstract concrete events from their own life. This performance will be a deeper exploration of an iteration that was shown at the Converge Festival of 2019, but that Peter began developing while at the University of Washington. As each doll takes on stereotypes and misconceptions of mental illness one by one, offering community and collective support as a remedy to isolation and ostracization.
While diverse in content, all three choreographers tackle societal expectations and projections, and liberating both the individual and the collective imagination from these constraints through dance. From mental illness to race to our most intuitive psychological associations, this year’s Bridge Project artists are all about breaking down desiccated, outdated, and even oppressive structures to pave way for the new.
PHOTO – Courtesy of Alyssa Boone
about the artists
Alyssa Boone
ALYSSA BOONE (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer in Seattle, WA. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Western Michigan University with a BFA in Dance in the Spring of 2019. While at school, Alyssa performed works by Paul Taylor, Aszure Barton, Brian Enos, and Joshua Manculich, working in rehearsal processes with Jonathan Alsberry, Tobin Del Cuore, and Brett Perry. Since moving to Seattle in the Summer of 2019, Alyssa was selected to work with Kate Wallich to perform excerpts of Industrial Ballet at Seattle’s Broadway Performance Hall. She has received scholarships to attend summer programs at the Joffrey Ballet School under the mentorship of Desmond Richardson and DanceWorks Chicago under the mentorship of Julie Nakagawa.
Her approach to choreography is informed by innovators of the Concept Art movement, including Andy Warhol, Joseph Kosuth, and Barbara Kreuger. She is interested in exploring how striking visual art concepts can relate to choreographic design. In the Fall of 2018, Alyssa created a surrealist evening-length piece, entitled Wisteria, for which she served as co-director and choreographer in collaboration with various theater designers to create an immersive theatrical-dance production. Most recently, Alyssa has accepted a Creative Residency at Velocity Dance Center as part of “The Bridge Project,” in which she will premiere a new, 20-minute work at Velocity in February of 2020.
Lucille Jun
LUCILLE JUN‘s work as an artist is to translate the multitude of histories and lived experiences of the body onto the stage, asking the audience to reevaluate their assumptions. She began her dance career in college, when her path completely changed from aspiring physicist to that of choreographer. Since 2011, she has performed with a traditional Korean dance company, Yeon, in Seoul, South Korea, which led to an interest in creating a fusion of movement stemming from traditional Korean and western contemporary dance along with her research into hip-hop. She also has performed with Some Dance Company at the Busan International Dance Festival and Seoul Fringe Festival and has co-choreographed for 150 dancers with little to no contemporary dance experience for a youth festival in Korea. She has performed in pieces by Shakia “The Key” Johnson, Angie Hauser, Wendy Woodson, Sarah Seder, Bebe Miller, Kristin Hapke, and Candice Salyers. She recently graduated with an MFA in Dance from Smith College.
Kai Kohring
KAI KOHRING is a performance artist, dancer, and choreographer with a focus on interdisciplinary art. Experienced in choreography, performance and stage tech, Kai comfortably transitions from backstage to center stage. As a youth mental health provider, Kai encourages and nurtures the healing qualities of art, as both an educator and performer.