NUGENT DANCE AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES CENTER OF UCSB PRESENT

ONE
A performance of solo dance/theater
by STEPHANIE NUGENT

Solo choreographer/performer Stephanie Nugent joins forces with New York City-based composer Eve Beglarian, San Francisco-based choreographer Kim Epifano, Little Rock-based visual artist Catherine Siri Nugent, Santa Barbara-based scholar Aysha Hidayatullah, video artist Erin Martinez, and lighting designer Vickie J. Scott, to present One, an evening of solo dance/theater, exploring constructions of individual identity. These are premiere performances of what will be a national tour in 2006.

One comprises four dance/theater works; In the Shadow of the Red Brick, looking at family history and personal identity through the humor and poignancy of Nugent's girlhood personas of rebel, good girl, agnostic, and dancer; Circa One, investigating identity and singularity through motion, stillness, and relationships in space; Wintering, a stark and experimental work exploring feminine identity in a shifting paradigm of feminism; and Untitled Interior, a multi-media performance regarding issues of modesty, the body, and sacred space. BOX OFFICE

MORE ABOUT THE WORKS

Notable Bay-Area "sonic dance theater artist" Kim Epifano, collaborates with Nugent to present In the Shadow of the Red Brick. Directed by Epifano and performed by Nugent, this work humorously and poignantly reflects Nugent's girlhood personas of rebel, good girl, agnostic, and dancer. Through incorporation of text, song, musical and spiritual traditions from Nugent's American and Italian heritage, the artists seek to present a non-linear picture of her search for cultural identity.

Circa One opens with Nugent revealed as a single moving body. It is the most stripped of scenic elements and represents the purity of experience that the human body alone can express. In this work, Nugent questions whether one can ever really dance (or live for that matter) "solo". Neo-baroque music by Belinda Reynolds creates an expansive yet highly articulate soundscape.

Wintering is a nonlinear narrative of sound, image, and movement. Nugent creates an analogy between the cyclical journey of hibernation in nature and the strikingly common occurrence of emotional/verbal introversion in adolescent girls as documented in writer/therapist Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. In this work Nugent paints an expressionistic picture of the experience of retreating into the depths of one's internal life and the struggle to re-emerge from self, towards re-connection with society.

Untitled Interior, the most collaborative work in One, addresses issues of modesty, the body, and sacred space as they pertain to living in and relating to the world. Nugent was inspired to create this work after reading Nafisi Azar's Reading Lolita in Tehran. This work holds particular interest in the notion of modesty and separation as a choice. Untitled Interior includes collaborations between Nugent and NYC-based avant-garde composer/performer Eve Beglarian; Aysha Hidayatullah, a scholar of feminist and gender studies in Islam; video artist Erin Martinez; Little Rock-based costume/scenic artist Catherine Siri Nugent; lighting designer Vickie J. Scott.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Stephanie M. Nugent is a dancer, improviser, choreographer, and teacher. An Assistant Professor of Dance at University of California, Santa Barbara, she holds a B.F.A. from the North Carolina School of the Arts and a M.F.A. from California State University - Long Beach, where she was twice awarded the prestigious Baker Scholarship for Excellence in the Arts.

As a performer, Ms. Nugent currently works with Keith Johnson and Dancers (1997-2001 & 2004 - present) and Victoria Marks (2002-present). She has also performed throughout the U.S. and abroad with American dance companies and choreographers including Ririe Woodbury Dance Company (1991-1995), Malashock Dance and Company (1995-1997), Leslie Partridge (1996), Della Davidson Dance (2001), Robin Prichard (2001), Carmela Hermann (2000-2003), Eun Jung Gonzalez (2003), Christopher Pilafian (2001-2004), and with Internationally based choreographers Il Kyu Park (South Korea, 1987), Abelardo Geomache (Venezuela, 1988), Rejo Kela (Finland, 1988), Susanna Tambuti (Argentina, 1989), and Inbal Pinto (Israel, 1998).

Her choreography has been presented in New York by the Next Generation of Dance in Westchester and the Next Stage Company; in Italy by the Daniella Agostini and the Commune of Padova, in Utah by Ririe Woodbury Dance Company and Loose Gravel Dance Company; in North Carolina by North Carolina School of the Arts, and in California by Los Angeles Dance Kaleidoscope, Malashock Dance and Company, Sushi Visual and Performance Art, and Santa Barbara Dance Theater, among others. Her honors include the 2001 Individual Artist Award presented by the Santa Barbara Arts Fund and a 2002 Lester Horton Award for her performance in Victoria Marks' Against Ending.

Ms. Nugent's evenings of creative work include Somewhere Between Falling and the Ground (2002); 'Tis Spring: from memory to musings (2003), a shared an evening with dance artist Kristen Smiarowski; her solo show entitled Relative/ Distance (2005), which premiered in Padova, Italy; and her newest evening, ONE, which will premiere in September 2005 in Santa Barbara. In 2004 she earned a National College Choreographer's Initiative Grant to bring choreographer Kim Epifano to UCSB, and, for her own creative work, she has been supported by grants from UCSB, including a Junior Faculty Incentive Award, two grants from the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, a 2005 Junior Faculty Fellowship, a Faculty Research Grant, and travel grants to Arizona, Utah, and South Korea with which she conducted research and performed. Ms. Nugent collaborates regularly with composer, Robin Cox, and in her newest evening ONE, joins forces with renowned artists including NYC avant-garde composer Eve Beglaraian and SF choreographer Kim Epifano.

As an educator, Ms. Nugent specializes in modern dance technique, improvisation, and mentoring student choreographers through creation and production. She has taught master classes and workshops at Velocity Dance Center (WA), UCLA, University of Montana, Meredith College (NC), Los Angeles High School for the Performing Arts, Santa Barbara Dance Collective, and has been on faculty at California State University -Long Beach, Orange County High School for the Performing Arts, North Carolina Governor's School, Cerritos College, Rio Hondo College, Orange Coast College, Citrus College, and from 1995 -1996 she was Chair of the dance program at the North Carolina Governor's School. Ms. Nugent has taught contact improvisation at Dance Home in Santa Monica, and was the founder and teacher of a contact improvisation class and jam in San Pedro, CA from 2000-2001. She currently serves as Vice President of non-profit company Iridian Arts and is on the board of Center Stage Theater in Santa Barbara.

Eve Beglarian "One of new music's truly free spirits,"(Kyle Gann, The Village Voice) and a "remarkable experimentalist," (Albert Innaurato, The New York Times) Eve Beglarian is a composer, performer, and audio producer whose music has been described as "an eclectic and wide-open series of enticements." (Josef Woodard, The Los Angeles Times) Her chamber and orchestral music has been commissioned and performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the California EAR Unit, Relâche, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, Sequitur, Dinosaur Annex, and the Robin Cox Ensemble, among many others. Her experience in music theater includes music for Mabou Mines' Obie-winning Dollhouse, Animal Magnetism, and Ecco Porco, directed by Lee Breuer; the collaboration Hildegurls' Ordo Virtutum, directed by Grethe Barrett Holby, which premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival; twisted tutu, a performance project with Kathleen Supové; Forgiveness, a collaboration with Chen Shi-Zheng and Noh master Akira Matsui; and the China National Beijing Opera Theater's production of The Bacchae, also directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. Current projects include Re-Thinking Mary, a performance project that will be developed at the Atlantic Center for the Arts; a Meet the Composer co-commission for The Bilitis Songbook, a song cycle/concept CD with boombox virtuoso and composer Phil Kline; a major piece for cellist Maya Beiser that will premiere at Carnegie's Zankel Hall; and A Book of Days, a long-term project of 365 multimedia pieces for live performance as well as internet delivery. Recordings of Eve's music are available on CRI Emergency Music, OO Discs, Canteloupe, Accurate Distortion, Atavistic, and Kill Rock Stars. For more information about Eve Beglarian visit www.evbvd.com

Kim Epifano (collaborating composer, director, aerialist) is a choreographer, singer, and actress whose training includes everything from ballet to Capoeira. The artistic director of Epiphany Productions, she integrates movement, sound, and theater in a thought-provoking style. Kim was one of the main collaborators with the Internationally acclaimed Contraband dance troupe for nine years. She has received critical acclaim in the Bay Area and Internationally. She is a full time dance-theater professor at San Diego State on a one-year position and also works with children, adults, professional dancers, developmentally disabled, and physically challenged people. This year she received the National College Choreographers grant to set work on the students at the University of California, Santa Barbara with whom she will present Gather in San Francisco at Mission Theater in May 2004. The program will include works by Ms. Epifano, Stephanie Nugent, and Christopher Pilafian.

Aysha Hidayatullah (collaborating scholar) is a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is pursuing a PhD in Religious Studies, specializing in Islamic feminist theology. She has written on a number of topics concerning gender, sexuality, and the body in Islam, including "Islamic Conceptions of Sexuality" (in Sexuality and the World's Religions, eds. Machacek, David, and Melissa Wilcox, 2003); recent conference presentations include "Returning the Gaze: Bodies, Women, and the Burka Since 9/11" and "Nisa'iya: Naming a Muslim Women's 'Feminist' Theology Movement." She currently serves on the advisory board for Abraham's Vision, a New York/Jerusalem-based interfaith conflict resolution program for young Arab- and Jewish-Americans. She is also the recipient of numerous grants and awards, most recently UCSB Religious Studies Department's 2004 Professor Charles Wendell Memorial Award for excellence in Islamic studies. Her current research examines the historical memory of the seventh-century figure Mariyah the Copt, the Egyptian consort of the Prophet Muhammad. This March she will be traveling to Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates to speak on terminologies of feminism among Muslim women.

Erin Martinez is a graduate of University of California Santa Barbara with a B.A. in Dance and Art Studio. She has received faculty awards of distinction in both art studio and dance, as well as the Patricia Sparrow award. She has performed in a number of dance concerts while studying at UCSB including several concerts at the Center Stage theater. Erin choreographed the piece "Procession of Pieces"in the Seven Fall Dances Concert and also created "Living Inside the Box", a forty-five minute, multi-media show for her honor's project. In her senior year at UCSB she was apart of the UCSB dance company, which traveled and performed throughout California and in Bellingham, Washington. In the fall she will be moving to New York to intern with the dance company Troika Ranch and applying for graduate school in film.

Catherine S. Nugent (collaborating scenic & costume designer) is a visual artist currently working with mixed media and conceptual art. She is an instructor in Studio Art at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock where she received her MA in Drawing and Sculpture in 2000. She has been a freelance costume designer at the Arkansas Repertory Theater, in Little Rock and at the Ryman Theater in Nashville TN where she was designer for the revival of Always Patsy Cline. She has worked as costume designer for dance companies including Nugent Dance and Ririe Woodbury Dance Company where she designed costumes for a premier work by Laura Dean. Most recently Ms. Nugent's mixed media and installation work has been seen in group and invitational shows including the UALR Faculty Show, the Eat Invitational, and the Annual Regional Delta Exhibition, a competitive exhibition at the Arkansas Art Center. She has received acclaim for her work in numerous reviews including Arkansas Times, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and Fiber Arts Magazine. As an independent installation, her work Mourning Paper / Morning Prayer was quoted as "steeling the show . . . a top-flight conceptual piece" in an invitational show Taking Liberties in a Church Attic.

Vickie J. Scott (collaborating lighting designer) is the Head of the Design Program in the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Where she teaches, designs lights and co-directs productions in dance and theater. Ms. Scott has created lighting and scenic designs for dance and theater productions throughout the US. As a lighting designer for dance she has collaborated with companies including Santa Barbara Dance Theater and Nugent Dance, Nugent's Simple Intimacies. She has also designed lights for the dance-theater production Five Foot Feat conceived by Catherine Cole. In theater, Ms. Scott has designed lights for Santa Barbara productions of The Weir, Private Lives and The Cripple of Inishmaan at Ensemble Theatre Co., Theatre Artists Group productions of The Glass Menagerie and Richard III, and scenery and lights for Dramatic Women productions The Space Between the Stars among others. she is a member of the Advisory Board for the California Arts Project, is the Vice-Commissioner for Special Projects of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology Lighting Design Commission and is a member of the United Scenic Artists local 829.

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Center Stage Theater is located in the Paseo Nuevo Center, upstairs at the intersection of Chapala and De la Guerra Streets, Santa Barbara, California.

Take Highway 101 to Carrillo Street, exit and turn toward the mountains (northbound turns right, southbound turns left). Proceed to Chapala Street (fourth light) and turn right. Proceed 1-1/2 blocks and turn left into either of two entrances to Paseo Nuevo. Park near the elevator, or proceed to roof-level parking.