33 Fainting Spells Performs Our Little Sunbeam November 20

Story posted November 08, 2004

The Bowdoin College Department of Theater and Dance will present Our Little Sunbeam performed by the Seattle-based dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells at 8 p.m., Saturday, November 20 in Pickard Theater, Memorial Hall.

Tickets are free, and are available at the David Saul Smith Union information desk, by calling 207-725-3375, or at the door.

Our Little Sunbeam is a dance-theater collision between Anton Chekhov, the U.S. Space Program, and a host of other sources.

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Photo: Peter Mumford.

Performers career through Chekhov's rarely produced tragedy Ivanov, original pop and rap music, and an outrageously eclectic dance vocabulary to pit the everyday despair of Chekhov's script against the ecstasy of American astronauts as they regarded earth from space for the first time in history.

Special guest Linas Phillips, an emerging figure in New York's experimental theater and underground comedy circles, joins 33 Fainting Spells' Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson for the performance.

Like past works by 33 Fainting Spells, Sunbeam makes the most of a wide-ranging body of source material from Ingmar Bergman to Jean-Luc Godard to American conceptual artist Bruce Nauman. When the themes inherent in other works come to bear on their treatment of Ivanov, they freely interweave the disparate sources into a dramatic, multi-layered movement sense that is singularly theirs.

Founded in 1994 by choreographers Dayna Hanson and Gaelen Hanson (no relation), 33 Fainting Spells is devoted to making original new work in dance theater and dance film. The company has toured nationally and internationally, traveling to over 20 dance and contemporary performance venues.

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Photo: Peter Mumford.

With The Northwest Film Forum, 33 Fainting Spells also co-presents New Dance Cinema, the Pacific Northwest's only festival of contemporary dance film and video.

Hanson and Hanson have received numerous grants for their collaborative work, are two-time Alpert Award nominees, and were 1997 recipients of Artist Trust's Choreography Fellowship.

Dayna Hanson studied literature, translation and fiction writing before turning to choreography in 1987. She was a founding member of the interdisciplinary performance group Run/Remain and has appeared in the work of former collaborators The Black Cat Orchestra and filmmaker Gregg Lachow. Her own dance theater work has been presented in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Gaelen Hanson earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1990 with a double major in dance and theater. In 1992, she completed her advanced diploma in dance/performance at the European Dance Development Center in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Before co-founding 33 Fainting Spells, she performed nationally and internationally as a dancer in the companies of Mary Overlie, Stephanie Skura and Randy Warshaw, and performed her own solo work at new performance venues in The Netherlands, Germany, New York and Seattle.

New York-based performer Linas Phillips brings his own uniquely compelling movement sensibility to Our Little Sunbeam. Phillips' work has been seen recently at LaMaMa, Galapagos and other New York area venues. His latest work was featured on Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks series in November 2003.

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Photo: Peter Mumford.

To realize their own sound and visual design - an austerely detailed environment of video projections and furniture - 33 Fainting Spells worked in collaboration with visual designer Jean Landry and costume designer KD Schill.

Our Little Sunbeam was co-commissioned by On The Boards in Seattle and by the NPN Creation Fund with co-commissioners Dance Theater Workshop in New York City and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The Bowdoin College performance of Our Little Sunbeam is produced with assistance from the Alice Cooper Morse Fund for the Performing Arts, the Bowdoin English and Russian departments, the Campus Activities Board, and Lectures and Concerts.

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