SINCE THOU WAST PRECIOUS IN MY SIGHT, VOL. 2 is a highly athletic duel that confronts the socialization of submission. Choreographer Danielle Russo draws upon themes of original sin, obedience, and penance from her own experiences with and withstanding Catholic devotions to further examine the scope and risk of embodied dogma when imposed, how it is imposed, and said consequences. In doing so, she identifies frameworks for the performance of power through posture, gesture, and movement motifs, and in response, cyclical choreographies of compliance and deference that are not only adjacent, but conditioned, and their real exhaustion. What is the endurance, the ceiling, the undoing of a body of trust and conviction? What is the habit, grievance, and at times, desire to submit?

With an observational audience as bystander, the choreography explores how dance and live art can be a space to challenge and to provoke critical conversations about collective behavior and ideas around power, ascension, and compliance, as well as resistance in our own relationships, social cultures and ecosystems, on a personal to global scale.

As an installation, the performance persists on a 30-minute loop for a mobile audience to witness in the round and at-will. Audiences enter a square room where two performers are encased by 2 weight-bearing walls that withstand, resist, and reverberate their ritual and its unraveling. The performance is pared down, free of any theatrical lighting or recorded music so that the overall convergence becomes bare, exposed, felt, and undeniable, and as a result, equally witnessed by its incidental soundscape in its heard devotion.

Touring of SINCE THOU WAST PRECIOUS IN MY SIGHT, VOL. 2 is made possible through the generosity and support of Cornell University’s Arthur C. and Molly Phelps Bean Faculty Fellowship, Mark Jeffery, the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and Co-Prosperity.

CHOREOGRAPHY
DANIELLE RUSSO

PERFORMANCE
KEVIN J. SHANNON
JARUAM XAVIER

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
DANIELLE RUSSO (she/her) is a choreographer and performer, artivist and community organizer, and scholarly educator working in aesthetics, philosophies, and thresholds of experimental dance and performance on the continuum of intermedia and socially engaged artwork. Since founding Danielle Russo Performance Project (DRPP) in 2010, she has been producing large-scale performances and experiential artwork in public spaces, for public audiences, and frequently, through public collaborations. As a choreographer, she has been presented nationally at the American Dance Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center for Performing Arts at Damrosch Park, The Oculus at the World Trade Center, and The Yard; and internationally in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Mexico, Panama, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Trinidad and Tobago. Residency and fellowship awards have included C.N.N. – Ballet de Lorraine (FR), Danscentrum Jette (BE), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (BE), Independent Artists Initiative WUK (AT), Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation (US), LEIMAY (US), Mana Contemporary (US), Performing Arts Forum (FR), and Springboard Danse Montréal (CA), among others. She is a multi-year grant recipient of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Carnegie, Dance/NYC, Harkness Foundation for Dance, One Brooklyn Fund, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Additional highlights include Armory Arts Week, Julian Schnabel’s Casa del Popolo, Governors Island, HERE Arts Center, The High Line Nine, La MaMA (fabNYC), LMCC River to River with Amy and Jennifer Khoshbin, Moynihan Station, Place des Arts, and Solange Knowles’s Saint Heron, to name a few. She holds BFA in Dance and a BA in Anthropology from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University/ADF. Outside of her own devising, Russo danced with The Metropolitan Opera for several seasons. As an educator, she has served on faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, CUNY Queens College, University of Iowa, and The Joffrey Ballet School BFA and Professional Divisions. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance & Critical Dance Studies in the Department of Performing & Media Arts at Cornell University. There, she lectures and leads studio courses in interdisciplinary dance and devising; interactive technologies, sensory devices, and new media for live art; dance and performance as social practice; lineages and legacies of art activism; and public to place-specific art-making models, ethics, and production, to name a few.

KEVIN J. SHANNON (he/him) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and is a graduate of the Baltimore School for the Arts. He received additional training from the Miami City Ballet School, Paul Taylor Dance School, School of American Ballet, and Springboard Danse Montréal. While at The Juilliard School, Kevin performed in the televised centennial gala celebration on PBS Live from Lincoln Center as well as toured with the Juilliard Dance Ensemble. Upon graduating from The Juilliard School with his BFA, Kevin was invited to join Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. While a company dancer with Hubbard Street for fifteen seasons, he had the privilege of performing leading roles in works by Kyle Abraham, Aszure Barton, Alejandro Cerrudo, Peter Chu, Sharon Eyal, William Forsythe, Jirí Kylián, Ohad Naharin, Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, and Robyn Mineko Williams among many others. As an educator, he has led and programmed the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Summer Intensive, is on faculty for the Gibney Pro certificate program under the direction of Alexandra Wells and is currently a guest teacher for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, José Limón Dance Company, and Gibney Company. Kevin has been a visiting artist for the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a guest educator for the University of Chicago. Additionally, he has served as faculty for Chicago Movement Collective, Gibney Dance, The Joffrey Ballet School, Peridance Center, and Youth American Grand Prix teaching ballet, contemporary, improvisation, and Limón based technique. Kevin is a certified IMAGE TECH for dancers™ teacher. Kevin continues to perform as a freelance artist dancing with Brian Brooks/Moving Company, Danielle Russo, Flockworks Dance, Hélène Simoneau, and kNonAme/Roderick George. He has also had the privilege to stage the works of Robyn Mineko Williams.

JARUAM XAVIER (he/him) is a professional dancer of Brazilian heritage who has performed for numerous companies and choreographers in Belgium, Brazil, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Uruguay, and the United States. He was a company member of Brazil’s preeminent Balé da Cidade de São Paulo from 2008 to 2018, where he was featured in the works of Mauro Bigonzetti, Alexander Ekman, Andonis Foniadakis, Itzik Galili, Francesca Harper, André Mesquita, Ohad Naharin, and Cayetano Soto. As a choreographer, he delves into the exploration of Anthropophagic Body Formation, a methodology he employs to articulate the assimilation of knowledge through the embodiment of dance and cultural hybridity. His works bear the influence of Candomblé, Capoeira, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which is evident in their distinctive traits. He has received prestigious fellowships, scholarships, and grants, enabling him to research Capoeira and Candomblé, both African-Brazilian diasporic embodied practices. As a student at the University of Iowa, Jaruam had been actively involved as a teaching assistant for the Brazilian Cultural and Carnival, sharing his expertise and passion. In his artistic journey, he collaborated with renowned programs such as the International Writing Program and the Grant Wood Art Colony at the University of Iowa, where he was appointed rehearsal director for Flockworks Dance. He was recently invited as an Artist in Residence at Art Omi and worked for Stephanie Miracle, Danielle Russo, and Kieron Dwayne Sargeant. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Theater & Dance in the College of Arts & Science at Bucknell

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