Hot Hands
The Wallach Art Gallery presents Hot Hands, a performance conceived and choreographed by the artist Madeline Hollander in conjunction with the exhibition Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood. Hot Hands features six dancers and draws choreographic inspiration from the reflex-driven hand game of its title, as well as other archetypal clapping games found across the globe. The collaborative piece taps into the dancers’ muscle memories and childhoods, and playfully explores the corporeal vocabularies articulating fake-outs, flinches, anticipation, concentration, keeping score, and breaking rules. The installation presents 6 locally sourced inverted tables that have been converted into “roundabouts,” a revolving piece of playground equipment. These spinning structures inform the dancers’ trajectories, with arrows indicating their next move as they cycle through the game ad infinitum.
Free to the public. Viewers are invited to come and go as they please throughout the performance.
Performers: Antuan Byers, Eloise Deluca, Marielis Garcia, Katie Gaydos, Peter Mazurowski, Frances Samson, Vinicius Silva
Costumes by Kamperett
Growing Sideways: Performing Childhood is curated by Piper Marshall and on view at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery through September 15.
Madeline Hollander is an artist and choreographer who works with performance, video and installation to explore how human movement and body-language negotiate their limits within everyday systems of technology, intellectual property law, and ritual. Hollander assembles movement and environments to compose sequences that investigate the formation of new body languages, quotidian gestures, social behavior, and spectacle. Hollander has exhibited works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2023); Performa’s 2021 Biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut; The Artists’ Institute, NY; The Park Avenue Armory, NY; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany; the Serpentine Galleries, Londons, UK; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA; Gagosian, New York; Bosse & Baum Gallery, London, UK; Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki, Finland; Galeria Zmud, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Bortolami Gallery, NY; Signal, NY; Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, NY; the Sculpture Center, NY; Jack Hanley Gallery, NY; Tina Kim Gallery, NY; The Kitchen, NY; Torrance Shipman Gallery, NY; and the Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2019). She choreographed two ballets, “5 Live Calibrations” and “Elastic Ballet,” for Los Angeles Dance Project in Los Angeles, that premiered at the Theatre Champs-Elysees, Paris, and the Louvre, Abu Dhabi. Hollander received her MFA in Film/Video from the Milton Avery School of Arts, Bard College in 2018.
Antuan Byers (he/him) is a dancer, model, creative entrepreneur, and organizer. Basing his multidisciplinary practice in Lenapehoking, Manhattan, New York, he is using movement as a catalyst for societal change. As a freelance dancer, he regularly works with distinguished institutions and choreographers/directors as a performer and teacher; however, he shares his time building communities, creating resources, and finding innovative avenues to support his community.
Eloise DeLuca received her BA in dance from California State University of Long Beach and has worked as a performance artist in New York for the last twelve years. She has movement directed for Solange Knowles at the Solomon R. Guggenheim and toured with Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange. She performed and acted as dance captain for the First National Tour of Fiddler on the Roof, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter. She is currently attending California Institute of the Arts for an MFA in Choreography.
Marielis Garcia is a Dominican American multidisciplinary artist who has performed and toured both nationally and internationally as a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Katie Gaydos is a Los Angeles based dance artist who has danced with Madeline Hollander, Yannis Adoniou’s KUNST-STOFF, and Robert Moses’ Kin Dance. Katie also works as a licensed clinical social worker and is interested in the intersection of performance and psychoanalysis.
Marielis Garcia is a Dominican American multidisciplinary artist who has performed and toured both nationally and internationally as a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Peter Mazurowski is currently a freelance artist based in New York. He was previously a company dancer with Charlotte Ballet and LA Dance Project, and played the role of Billy in “Billy Elliot: the Musical” on Broadway.
Hailed by the Boston Globe as "absorbing, steadfast and compelling", Frances Lorraine Samson is a New York based artist originally from Toronto, Canada. She was a principal dancer with the Limón Dance Company from 2017-2023 and has been featured by Dance Magazine, TEDx and Harper's Bazaar. Most recently, she has had the pleasure of collaborating with Award-winning artists Twyla Tharp, Baye & Asa and Jamar Roberts, and is currently on faculty at SUNY Purchase. Frances is the 2023 recipient of the Clive Barnes Award for Dance and is an unarmed actor combatant certified by The Society of American Fight Directors.
Vinicius Silva is a freelance artist originally from Brazil, now based in New York. He graduated with a Vocational Degree in classical and contemporary dance from the John Cranko School in Germany, and he is a former member of L.A. Dance Project. Most recently he was featured in Madeline Hollander’s work at the Toulmin Fellowship Showcase at National Sawdust, and “Pentagon Dance” at the Hill Art Foundation.