Photo courtesy of Metro Micro Gallery.Photo courtesy of Metro Micro Gallery..
Schedule of Events:
MONDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2017
8pm: Fleshlight, a duet performed by Samir Bitar and Erin White
8:15-9:15pm: Laked, an intimate happening from Heart Stück Bernie involving choreography by Sarah Beth Oppenheim, music by Daniel Mancini, and portraiture by Zachary Z. Handler. Made over and over for 2 audience members at a time inside the installation.
9:15pm: Fleshlight, performed once again by Samir Bitar and Erin White
Join Metro Micro Gallery on December 4th for an evening at the intersection of art and dance at Metro Micro Gallery in Arlington, Virginia. Choreographers Samir Bitar and Sarah Beth Oppenheim will debut works which respond to the unique environment of Throwing Light, a site-specific installation by Sarah Hardesty that evokes a sensory memory of place through an optical experience of reflection and light. The evening will begin and end with Fleshlight, a duet between Samir Bitar and Erin White that will incorporate flashlights to increase the amount of light thrown, caught, reflected, and refracted in the installation. A micro dance for a micro gallery, Fleshlight will amplify the complexities of seeing and being seen through layers of glass within the built environment. Bookended by performances of Fleshlight, Sarah Beth Oppenheim’s Laked is a durational performance that will invite small groups of audience members to move from the outside into the interior of the installation for 5-minute intervals over the span of an hour. Described by Oppenheim as “a play on exactitude and interpretation,” Laked will allow audience members to experience the work from both sides of the glass, fostering a heightened sensitivity to the influence of location and proximity on perception and understanding.
Sign-up in advance through Eventbrite for a timeslot to participate in Laked. Limited timeslots may also be available on the evening of the performance. A link to the event can be found on Metro Micro Gallery’s Facebook page.
About the Dancers
Sarah Beth Oppenheim hails from the golden California fields of cowgirls and Cannery Row. Now she moves by wild and literary standards. She enjoys perfectly stuffed burritos, magical realism tomes, and windowsills with the good view of a crescent moon. Incidentally, those are also her dance ingredients, along with 20 years of teaching barefoot in a studio. She earned her BFA at SUNY Purchase, her MFA at University of Maryland, and she is currently working as a community organizer, comic book editor, and documentary consultant for 120 Project – a social justice arts activism platform that uses dance, comics, and dialogue as a premise for community building. (120Project.com) Her company Heart Stück Bernie makes site-specific performance art with exposed seams and a highbrow/lowbrow zeitgeist cocktail. She lives in Takoma Park, MD with the love of her life, a passion for teaching, and a fireplace with construction paper flames. May she have the next dance with you? sarahbethoppenheim.com
Samir Bitar is a dancer, choreographer, and producer based in Washington D.C. To date he has choreographed eight original dances: Flip Roates (2001), Bound and Rebound (2004), Flip Rotates II (2004), La Grotto (2005), 24 Entrances and Exits (2005), Breathe (2005), Syncopations (2005), Blue Release (2006), and Unrealized (2007). Currently, Samir is honored to dance with Kelly King in Washington and Jonah Bokaer in New York. Previously, he danced with Erica Rebollar and Tzveta Kassabova. Samir holds a Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University.
Metro Micro Gallery is built upon the notion of paying it forward, working collaboratively, and doing good in the world. Resonating with this mission, the title of this installation, Throwing Light, alludes to action and illumination and suggests positivity as a catalyst for change and growth. The sometimes private space of a gallery is made public here; the viewer does not need to enter the space in order to see the work, but merely needs to take a moment to look in while passing by.
Sarah Hardesty, artist has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Wassaic Project, the Carriage House at Islip Art Museum, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont Studio Center. Her drawings, paintings, and installations have been included in numerous exhibitions including ISE Cultural Foundation, New York; Davidson Contemporary, New York; and the Tucson Museum of Art and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ. She has been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant and a Leon Levy award and received her MFA in Painting from the University of Arizona. Born in Strong, Maine, Hardesty currently lives and works in the Washington DC area.
Betsy Johnson, guest curator, is a curatorial assistant at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC where she has worked on exhibitions such as Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Mark Bradford: Pickett’s Charge. She is ABD in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland and has curated exhibitions locally for the Washington Project for the Arts, the Arlington Arts Center, and The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park..
This Program is supported in part by Arlington County through the Arlington Cultural Affairs Division of Arlington Economic Development and the Arlington Commission for the Arts.
Metro Micro Gallery is located at 3409 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA. For more information, please visit www.metromicrogallery.com.
