VARVARA | Saturday | January 24 | 7:30 PM

Varvara, an evening-length solo choreographed and performed by Jenna Riegel, is a response to both Alexander Rodchenko’s photograph “Performing Furniture” (1922), which features his artistic collaborator and life partner Varvara Stepanova, and to Stepanova’s body of creative work. One of the prominent Russian Constructivist artists, Stepanova’s endeavors included textiles, visual poetry, costumes and set designs. Konstantin Rudnitsky, a Soviet theater critic of their time, wrote, “The human body was perceived as a machine: man had to learn to control that machine. It was the theatre’s function to demonstrate the fine tuning of the human ‘mechanisms’.” Varvara draws on Stepanova’s artwork as inspiration for movement making and comments on this Constructivist view of theatre’s function by exploring the body’s reaction to considering it as a mechanization versus perceiving and allowing it to be its own unruly, chaotic mess of expression. The work weaves together the worlds of Stepanova and Riegel through an interplay of what is real and what is imagined and speaks to themes of brokenness and rebirth. Collaborators include director Anna Adams Stark, lighting designer Kathy Couch and stage manager Alex Davis.

Jenna Riegel (Choreographer/Performer), originally from Fairfield, Iowa, is a dance artist and educator. Jenna holds an M.F.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Maharishi International University. During her eleven-year performing career in NYC, Jenna toured and performed nationally and internationally as a company member of David Dorfman Dance, Alexandra Beller/ Dances, Bill Young/ Colleen Thomas & Company and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. She also danced with Daara Dance (choreographer Michel Kouakou), Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, Shaneeka Harrell, Tania Isaac Dance and johannes weiland. Jenna taught classes in contemporary technique in New York City at Gina Gibney Dance Center, New York Live Arts, Mark Morris Dance Center and 100 Grand Dance. She has been on faculty in the dance departments of Barnard College, The Juilliard School and Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition, she has taught master classes at The Joffrey Ballet School, Columbia College, NYU, The New School, Ohio State University, SUNY Purchase, Bard College, Connecticut College and Williams College. Jenna has also been on faculty at the American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival and is currently an Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at Amherst College.

Photographer: Derek Fowles

Presented in partnership with the Bates College Department of Theater + Dance

VARVARA is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the six New England state arts agencies.

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