Friday + Saturday, March 30 + 31 @ 8.30pm
2011 Emerging Choreographer HARC Award Recipient Natalie Metzger’s dance theatre work is a performance experience that examines cult mentality, the evolution of god and the human attraction to destruction. The abstract narrative occurs amidst a futuristic landscape of decay that centers around an enigmatic “deity” that hangs from the ceiling and fills the performance space. This immersive descent into a world of cult mentality, violence and destruction was described by a former dancer of Nederlands Dans Theater as “the Rite of Spring meets Alien in Night of the Living Dead.”
Metzger is obsessed with the body and wants to distort it, touch it, expose it and extend it. She has a natural inclination towards dark absurdity, but also appreciates wit and the innate theatricality of life. As a choreographer, her movement is defined by awkward beauty, flung momentum and strange sensuality. Her obsession with the human body causes her to often use the audience in unconventional ways – encouraging them to feel the proximity of the living flesh of the performers. Metzger allows the audiences to discover the beautiful and the sexy in the ugly, grotesque and bizarre. She finds power in blurring the boundary between artistic disciplines and in so doing, transcending the traditional concept of dance. Her work fuses together movement, sound, video, text and image in hybrid performance work that creates an intimate environment for audiences to enter.
Sacrament is Directed by Choreographer Natalie Metzger with Music by Robert Allaire, Sets by Grant Gorrell, Lighting by Ellie Rabinowitz, Costumes by Asta Hostetter and Video Design by Masha Tatarintseva. Performers include Erica Carpenter, Gregory Dorado, Cameron Evans, Lexi Gibbons, Tiara Jackson, Stephanie Zalatel, Lindsey Lollie, Nicole Pfeiffer, Michelle Sagarminaga, and Jordon Waters.
Natalie Metzger is an award-winning choreographer/filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her work has been performed/screened in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Finland and Malaysia. Her film, For Water, received a Certificate of Distinction at the American Dance Festival’s International Screendance Festival for a “visually rich and thoughtful” project, a medal for musical excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival and an official selection from more than twelve different film festivals. Her stage and multimedia work has been selected for the CalArts Plays Itself Festival, SB-Adapt Festival, MixMatch Dance Festival, New Choreography Spotlight and the Fresh Squeezed Juice Festival.
To see more of her work, visit www.metzart.org.
The HARC Foundation (Help Artists & Rehabilitate Children) is a California non-profit 501(c)(3) organization formed in 1990 with the dual purpose to discover, support, promote and present emerging creative artists from all art disciplines and to use the creative arts as a therapeutic science in the rehabilitation of abused and neglected children. HARC is publicly supported, funded by individuals and corporate donations and grants. Through The HARC Awards, HARC holds national Creative Arts competitions in Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Music, Dance and Literature and grants cash awards and publicity and presentation opportunities to the winners. Through The CAT Awards, HARC grants Creative Arts Therapy cash awards to creative artists who wish to become licensed Music, Dance or Clinical Art Therapists and commit to working with abused and neglected children upon receipt of license. For further information about HARC, please visit www.harcfoundation.org.
$20/$15
