Work-in-Process Showing at the Distillery Artist Residency

Distillery Artist Residency in New Orleans presented the culminating Work-In-Process showing for the two 2016 artist fellows: Scotty Heron and Kesha McKey, livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer produced HowlRound TV channel at howlround.tv on Monday 10 August at 8 p.m. CDT (New Orleans) / 6 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 9 p.m. EDT (Washington, DC). 

In Twitter, use #howlround and follow @HowlRoundTV. Two 20-minute performances, each followed by audience discussion and feedback.

Distillery Artist Residency
Distillery imagines what New Orleans artists could articulate if provided rehearsal space, local and national artist exchange, free public showings, and a development stipend in a comprehensive three-month fellowship program at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. This interdisciplinary residency program captures creative research, development practices, and disciplinary exchange. Distillery utilizes outside artistic networks to expose, share, and generate contemporary dialogue about New Orleans performance while provoking communities of audiences to engage the artistic processes: developing creative literacy and building audiences into the future. Distillery fellows document their unique processes and dispersed audiences converge in critical environments at the CAC. The Distillery opens its doors to audiences via our final work-in-process performance: a 15-20 minute showing by each participating fellow that showcases the artists’ process as it appears at the end of the program. This final public showing, facilitated by program staff and local artists, and presented in the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans’ Freeport-McMoRan Theatre, is a peek inside the fellows’ rehearsal processes, that invites audience feedback (What works? What sparks? What are we more curious about?), while engaging the New Orleans performance community and its audiences.

Performers
Kesha McKey is a choreographer, educator, and professional performing artist in New Orleans. Kesha is a graduate of NOCCA, received her BS from Xavier University and her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the founding Artistic Director of KM Dance Project and has choreographed, directed and co-produced works such as Taken, Distorted Images, Lasting Images, and Footprints; traces of expressions. She has presented choreographic works for events such as the 2014 Courageous Conversations Summit, 2014 Dance for Social Change Festival, Fringe Festival – N.O., and the Guantanamo Public Memory Project. She is a faculty member of the Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute and has been an artistic facilitator for the Unita Blackwell Young Women’s Leadership Training. She has worked as a director on productions such as the Vagina Monologues and The Origins of Life on Earth. She is also a dance educator at NOCCA and the Program Coordinator of the Kuumba Institute, Ashé Cultural Arts Center Youth Program.

Scott Heron is a movement-based performance artist living in New Orleans. He began dancing at Colorado College, spent six years studying and performing with Deborah Hay in Austin, Tx. and then landed in New York’s East Village in the 1980s. There he gravitated to the downtown dance improv and performance art world centered around Performance Space 122 and Movement Research. His solo and group theatre works have been commissioned and produced in practically every downtown venue including The Kitchen, La Mama E.T.C, Dance Theater Workshop, Franklin Furnace, and P.S 122. He has performed with the Deborah Hay Dance Company and interpreted Hay’s choreography on his own. He is a juggler, stilt-walker, rope walker, acrobat, and founding member of Jennifer Miller’s Circus Amok, bringing free queer circus to New York City parks for a dozen years. He received a 2003 New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) award. He recently finished a two year project in collaboration with Brussels-based Thomas Hauert/Zoo, touring extensively in Europe, Canada and the U.S. He has collaborated with HIJACK dance of Minneapolis for 15 years making work together and touring in New York, Russia, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Most recently he made “Twink Spree Melee” in collaboration with Layard Thompson, “Lights up a tragedy” for the American Realness Festival, and is developing “Appalachian Spring Break,” a duet with musician Brendan Connelly.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.