For Dana

gerald casel dance

Seep

Choreography by Gerald Casel (in collaboration with the dancers)
Performed by Kelly Anderson, Kai Kleinbard, Paul Singh and Isadora Wolfe
Music by Nils Petter Molvaer, Carsten Nicolai and To Rococo Rot

Seep is a dance for four people developed through a collaborative process with the dancers (Kelly Anderson, Kai Kleinbard, Paul Singh and isadora Wolfe). This piece was created as a project for a Choreography class under the Masters program at University of Wisconsin –Milwaukee. There are three sections set to three different pieces of music: Nils Petter Molvaer, Carsten Nicolai and To Rococo Rot. For Dancemakers NYC, we will show excerpts from each section. Each of the sections is distinct in movement dynamics and spatial arrangements. Specifically for this dance, we examined the dynamics of tension and release as well as taking and relinquishing control in relation to another person. The result is a highly charged, atmospheric dance that portrays complex human relationships.

Seep, by definition, means to “flow or leak slowly through porous materials.” This word represented the right metaphor for the personal relationships being gradually developed in the piece. The title also depicted something fluid and visceral without being literal.

Here’s how a friend, Fiona Marcotty, described it, “I fucking loved it! It was beautiful and deep from the very first moment on. When they do that thing right in the beginning, reaching towards each other, the whole sense of feeling someone's aura, of the ways we touch and don't touch, and the things we sense about each other even without realizing it, about the way all our relationships are imperfect but heroic attempts to shape ourselves around each others' energy.... and that was just the first movement.”

BIOGRAPHY
Gerald Casel was born in the Philippines and raised in California. He received a BFA from The Juilliard School and since then has danced in the companies of Michael Clark, Lar Lubovitch, Zvi Gotheiner, and Stephen Petronio (1991-2005) where he served as Assistant Director. He was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award "Bessie" in 1997 for Sustained Achievement. His choreography (Gerald Casel Dance) has been presented at The Yard, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place, dancenow and Aaron Davis Hall. Gerald is an adjunct professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is thrilled to be working on his MFA at UWM as a fellow through the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship Program.