COMMUNITY AUDITIONS FOR A NEW “STORY AT THE QUARRY”

Collaboration, improvisation, and fun with acclaimed choreographer Alison Chase

STONINGTON – On Sunday, July 19 at 1 p.m., all community members are invited to a casting call for Q2: Habitat, Opera House Arts' new site specific performance at the historic Settlement Granite Quarry in Stonington. The casting call will be held in the gymnasium of the Deer Isle–Stonington Elementary School in north Deer Isle. Q2: Habitat , created and directed by Alison Chase and Mia Kanazawa and with original steel pan music by Nigel Chase, follows on the success of the joyous Quarryography in 2006–07.

This new “story at the quarry” is in process this summer and will feature a sneak preview of work–in–development August 7–8, with a full premiere of the completed piece in August 2010. The new performance will again feature professional dancers and troupes of community members, this time in new roles as bird watchers and other characters; as well as the return of heavy equipment operator Rick Weed and the debut of Charlie Peabody.

The schedule for community participants will include rehearsals on July 25, 26, and August 1 and 6, with three performances August 7–8. The rain date performance is scheduled for Sunday, August 9.

In addition to community participants, OHA is seeking the following for this production:

• volunteers to help with props and costumes the last two weeks of July in Brooksville. No special skills are needed either for the performance or assistance with prop construction.
• A small storage unit to use at the Quarry site

Alison Becker Chase, a founding artistic director of Pilobolus Dance Theater, is a resident of Brooksville, ME. She has a B.A. in Intellectual History and Philosophy from Washington University and an M.A. in Dance from UCLA. Ms. Chase co–created many Pilobolus works through the years, as well as making pieces on her own for the company, most recently the acclaimed Star–cross'd and Night of the Dark Moon. With Moses Pendleton she premiered the company Momix at the Milan Festival in 1980. Ms. Chase taught at Yale from 1991–1997. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980 and a Connecticut Governor's Award in 1997 and a Scripps Award in 2000. She has choreographed for La Scala Opera, the Geneva Opera, the Ballet du Rhin, the Fete de l'Humanite, the Ririe–Woodbury Company, and for the Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall. A recent interview with Ms. Chase is available on the Opera House website, www.operahousearts.org.

Mia Kanazawa, also a Brooksville resident, constructs, choreographs and performs her own work. She uses dance, handmade felt, paper, fabric, foam, rattan and bamboo to create one–of–a–kind functional and theatrical objects. Her dances explore issues of ethnic and cultural diversity; of finding a place for oneself in society. With designer Debby Lee Cohen and husband Mark Kindschi, Mia has constructed, choreographed and performed giant endangered species puppets for the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York City; as well as sculptural costumes for Meredith Monk, Houston Grand Opera, PBS's Kratt's Creatures, Ben & Jerry's and the Festival Quartier d'ete Parade in Paris. In 2003, OHA commissioned Come...stay...go, a theater piece with dance and puppets. Most recently, Ms. Kanazawa worked on a television project with HBO. She has a B.S. in dance and music from the University of Wisconsin. She has taught at College of the Atlantic and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, as well as numerous workshops and residencies in the U.S.

To register for the casting call, please call 367–2788 or email OHA's Program Manager, Jennifer Morrow, at jmorrow@operahousearts.org. For more information on Q2: Habitat or to purchase tickets for the sneak preview of work–in–development August 7–8, please go to www.operahouserarts.org.