An up close look at Pentacle’s Gallery artists Dante Brown, Liss Fain, and Mersiha Mesihovic.

Dante Brown/Warehouse Dance (c) Dante Brown

DANTE BROWN

Dante Brown aims to create work that is accessible to broad audiences while investigating some fairly psychologically dense topics.  It is the marriage of Brown’s hyper physical choreography, and a heightened emotionality that brings human experience to the forefront of the theatrical elements in his newest work Bully.  Bully premiered at Triskelion Arts in New York City last February and was shown in Boston as part of “Pentacle Presents: The Gallery and Guests” in early April.

From late June through July, Brown will share his process of physical and theoretical inquiry with the students of the Young Dancers Workshop through Bates Dance Festival. For over thirty years, the Bates Dance Festival in Maine has invited dancers from all over the country to study with some of the greatest dance instructors in the world.  For a rigorous three weeks, Brown will work with dancers aged 14 through 18 in a non-competitive and encouraging learning atmosphere, culminating in an informal showing at 4pm on July 14^th.

Up next is research for Brown’s newest work, Our Lips, which will premiere as part of CRAWL, a performance series, in October 2016 in New York City.  Inspired by Malcolm Ingram’s 2006 documentary, “Small Town Gay Bar,” Dante Brown will be traveling to rural communities throughout the U.S. in June 2016, locating LGBTQ communities in local bars, clubs, organizations, etc. Recording only the lips of the community members, Brown hopes to depict that within bodily difference, there is experiential unity. He hopes to generate a work that uplifts these unheard voices, physicalizing trauma and triumph by tapping into the experiences of those who undergo the daily practice of resistance, perseverance, and compassion.

Liss Fain Dance (c) RJ Muna

LISS FAIN

Liss Fain has been creating work since 1988, most recently presenting her performances as installations. By enveloping the space with vast set pieces and soundscapes (often with long term collaborator, Dan Wool), Fain invites audiences to experience the work from multiple points giving them permission to move around the dancers.

Liss Fain Dance will be showing Your Story Was Here at the Mill Valley Library on April 15^th. Interested in poetry, as much for its rhythm as for its imagistic possibilities, Fain reached for three poems by writer Jane Hirshfield. Val Sinckler loans her voice and Dan Wool wrote the score.

Tacit Consent, a new work in association with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, will premiere at The Forum at YBCA May 5th through the 8th. Tacit Consent will take place in four rooms, where the audience can roam freely and view dance in relation to sound environments and video projections.

 

Mersiha Mesihovic/CircuitDebris (c) Eric Bandiero

MERSIHA MESIHOVIC

“I am interested in the subterranean, presenting the human somatic and visceral experience in the context of the society we live in and our relationship to the world at large through looking closely at the connections, rhythms and energy that exist within our moving bodies.”   Mersiha Mesihovic, founder and artistic director of the cross-disciplinary company CircuitDebris, explores topics such as genocide, social conformity, and freedom in the work she makes for her company. Originally from Bosnia, Mesihovic has been based in New York City since 2012 and was recently described by TheWorldDances.com as a “rising NYC choreographer.”

Mesihovic is currently in residence and is guest lecturing at the Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa for the month of April.  She will be collaborating with the students to create and expand upon her latest work in progress, BosnianBorn, which derives from Mesihovic’s personal experience of fleeing from her hometown of Mostar at an early age.  She will also set VOID on the graduating class.  VOID is the second movement of The Trilogy (of survival). This work experiments with how society would exist without cultural expression. With her work Mesihovic strives to understand the ever-present, elusive question “why are we here?”