Listen to Your Mother: Film Premiere and Performance
Sunday, November 17th, 2024 at 3pm at Center for Performance Research
(361 Manhattan Avenue | Unit 1, Brooklyn, New York 11211)
Tickets: CLICK HERE $10 students/seniors and $25 general admission.
Celebrate the 18th anniversary of Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama with the premiere of the 20-minute dance film Listen to Your Mother and an intimate performance by the artists.
Listen to Your Mother is a choreographic research project dedicated to the lives of women-identifying artists who are immigrant mothers living in New York City. The project seeks to capture these underrepresented women's stories to inspire dialogue, appreciation, and social support instead of the ongoing prejudice endured that is historically placed against mothers and women in the arts.
CREDITS
Director & Choreographer: Anabella Lenzu
Videographer, Editor, and Music Composition: Todd Carroll
Text: Anabella Lenzu & Jerzy Grotowski
Drawings: Anabella Lenzu
Performers: Anabella Lenzu & Fiamma Lenzu-Carroll
Additional Choreography: Isadora Duncan “La Mere” (1921)
Music: Alexander Scriabin
Coach/ Reposition Isadora Duncan Repertory: Catherine Gallant
* The dance film Listen to Your Mother is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor, the New York State Legislature, and The Vermont Community Foundation.
* The performance Listen to Your Mother was developed in part during the 2022 Parent Artist in Residency at Movement Research and Artist-in-Residency at Carroll Hall, Brooklyn, as well with grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, The Vermont Community Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Brooklyn Arts Council.
Personal Input:
Choreography is a capturing apparatus, a frame for my ideas and my lived existence as a mother, artist, and immigrant transplanted from South America to the USA. Choreography tries to capture the essence of my existence.
I became an American citizen in 2018. I am a mother of a new generation of American citizens. As a mother, my job is to nurture, protect, and guide. I offer and reinforce a critical thinking education through the arts and through Dance.
As a citizen of the world, my body is a border, where the inside and outside worlds collide.
Discrimination & privilege.
As a mother and artist in my NYC art cocoon, sometimes I feel invisible. Who cares about a woman, a worker, an artist? Who is supporting me in my daily job to nurture, protect and guide? Why is my voice not heard?
My daily struggle is to construct a family, construct myself, and contribute to society as a pedagogue, artist, panelist, board member, etc., in the NYC art community. I have been creating in New York for the last 16 years, and the arc of my career includes 33 years of commitment internationally.
PAST EVENTS 2024 & 2023
World Premiere of "Listen to Your Mother" at La Mama Moves Festival, May 16-19, 2024 at La Mama, NYC.
Performance & Installation "Listen to Your Mother" at 2023 Snug Harbor Dance Festival on Sunday, Sept 24, 2023.
Dance Film Screening and Conversation about Motherhood and Art Making, Wednesday, May 31st: Carroll Hall Present An Evening with Artist Anabella Lenzu
Studies Project: "Redefining our place as Mothers, Artists, and Immigrants in the NYC landscape" as part of Movement Research ONLINE Saturday, April 29th:
Dancers, choreographers, and dance writers discuss how they navigated the unbalanced life of a parent/art-maker. What makes a good mother? What makes a good artist? For those women who dedicate themselves daily to nurture, protect, and guide others - is there any support for them?
This virtual encounter brings together a group of interdisciplinary artists in the dance field who are also parents, to have a conversation about how the field can provide support through resource-sharing, and create supportive environments in order to foster dialogues, appreciation, and social support. Organized & Moderated by Anabella Lenzu
"Listen to Your Mother" (2nd work-in-progress) at Movement Research at the Judson Church (55 Washington Square, New York, NY 10012) on Monday, March 6th, 2023.
"Listen to Your Mother" (First work-in-progress) at OUT Front Fest at The LGBT Center in NYC, on Jan. 17th & 18th, 2023
Support: "Listen to Your Mother" was developed in part during the 2022 Parent Artist in Residency at Movement Research and Artist-in-Residency at Carroll Hall, Brooklyn, as well with grants from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, The Vermont Community Foundation and The Harkness Foundation for Dance.
Research/Interviews: During 2022-2024, I interviewed mothers who are also dancers/choreographers that live and work in NYC. For clarification, the common thread is really that all are mothers and choreographers, not that all my guests are immigrants.
Christine Jowers, Vicky Shick, Sara Rudner, Ara Fitzgerald, Charmaine Warren, Terese Capuccilli, Marya Ursin, Elizabeth Mcpherson, Cara Hagan, Jody Sperling, Tanya Calamoneri, Jody Oberfelder, Gabriela Ammann, Irene Hutman-Monti, Alice Farley, Andrea Miller, Catherine Tharin, Justine Lynch, Violeta Velez, Jennifer Wright Cook, Kristin Marting, LuLu LoLo, Anna Azrieli, Mary Seidman, Heather Robles, Dian Dong, Dyane Harvey-Salaam, Catherine Gallant & Mor Mendel.
