About the project

In 2014, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the publication of Tender Buttons, Van Reipen Collective will present the entirety of Tender Buttons.

The company began working on the piece in late 2010.  Creating music from the sounds and rhythms of Stein’s words, we created a cabaret style performance of it, a live performance of a concept album – and performed it in several incarnations in New York, Houston, and Leipzig – with a great many wonderful collaborators in each city.  To see and hear the Tender Buttons concept album, please visit tender-buttons.com.

We are now looking at the work in another way – and are taking it apart piece by lovely piece – with new and varied collaborators for each stage – in an effort to “see” the text with fresh eyes.

This is all a work that is very much in progress.  We deeply appreciate your eyes and ears upon our work, and welcome your thoughts.

History

Food, Part II (“A Little Piece Please”)
Presented 3/23 and 3/30/13 at Eonta Space as part of Lovesphere 18

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Photo by Elena Herasme

Food, Part I
was presented on Nov 18, 2012 at the opening of Eonta Space and performed by Selena Anguiano, Cassandra V Chopourian, Steven Dworkin, Lauren Farber & Gary Heidt.

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Tender Buttons, a concept album
has been performed in New York, Houston, London & Leipzig.  Please visit the site tender-buttons.com for more information.

    34 Dekalb Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306

WHAT

Eonta Space is a gallery and performance loft located in the vibrant community of Journal Square, Jersey City.

Newly launched in November 2012, Eonta will host exhibitions, performances, and other events of local and NYC-area interest.

Eonta is the home-base development space of Van Reipen Collective.

WHERE

34 Dekalb Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306

]]> http://www.vanreipen.org/bubbles-2.htm/feed 0 http://www.vanreipen.org/margaret-meads-islands-of-passion-2011.htm http://www.vanreipen.org/margaret-meads-islands-of-passion-2011.htm#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:06:54 +0000 admin http://www.vanreipen.org/?p=732 Margaret Mead’s Islands of Passion
August 6-12, 2011
Westwerk-Gelände, Leipzig, Germany

]]> http://www.vanreipen.org/margaret-meads-islands-of-passion-2011.htm/feed 0 http://www.vanreipen.org/shelly%e2%80%99s-spherical-journey-2010.htm http://www.vanreipen.org/shelly%e2%80%99s-spherical-journey-2010.htm#comments Sat, 23 Oct 2010 20:53:02 +0000 admin http://www.vanreipen.org/?p=73 Shelly’s Spherical Journey (in progress)
Draft #1 at Theater for the New City, NYC – 2010

A darkly inspiring one-woman multi-sensory narrative incorporating butoh, jazz trumpet, mime, slapstick and song.

INTERVIEWER: I’m speaking from the picturesque Neander valley, near Düsseldorf in Germany. Around me lies a contorted landscape of calcareous rocks and man-made quarries. It was during work on these stone quarries that in 1856 one of the oldest inhabitants of this valley was found, someone who settled here about thirty-five thousand years ago. Neanderthal Man: Mr Neander is somewhat different by nature, bad-tempered even,  and he doesn’t seem particularly impressed by the international fame he enjoys.  Nevertheless he has politely agreed to answer a few questions, for our program; So, Mr Neander, did you expect to become so famous? I mean: as far as we know, you never did anything remarkable in your life: then all of a sudden you found you were a very important person. How do explain this?

NEANDER: That’s what you say. Were you there? Me yes, I was there. You no.

INTERVIEWER: Agreed, you were there. Well, do you feel that is sufficient?

NEANDER: Sufficient! I was already there!

Pause.

Do you know how to make nicks in stones, you, nicks all the same, do you know how to make the nicks monotonous? No, so what are you talking about? I know how to do it all right! And ever since I started, ever since I saw I’ve got the thumb for it, you see this thumb? this thumb that I put here and the other fingers I put there and in the middle there’s a stone, in my hand, gripped right so it can’t slip out, ever since I saw that I was holding the stone in my hand and hitting it, like this, or like that, well since then what I can do with the stones I can do with everything, with the sounds that come out of my mouth, I can make sounds like this, a a a, p p p, ny ny ny, and so I never stop making sounds, I start speaking, I never stop speaking, I start speaking about speaking, I start working stones I can use for working stones, and meantime it occurs to me to think, I think of all the things I could think when I think, and it occurs to me I’d like to do something to have others understand things, paint some red stripes on my face for example, no reason in particular, just to let the others, know I’ve put some red stripes on my face, and I don’t know what you think you have that I didn’t have, I had everything I wanted, everything that was done afterwards, I’d already done, everything that was said and thought and meant was already there in what I said and thought and meant, all the complication of complication was already there, I only have to pick up this stone with my thumb and the hollow of my hand and the other four fingers that fold over it, and everything is already there, I had everything that others had later, everything others knew and could do later I already had not because it was mine but because it was, because it was already, because it was there, whereas later others had it and knew it and could do it less and less, always a bit less than what might have been, than what there was before, what I had before, what I was before, I really was there then in everything and for everything, not like you, and everything was in everything and for everything, everything you need to be in everything and for everything, even everything wrong that came later was already there in that clank! clank! clink! clink! so what are you trying to say, what do you think you are, what do you mean thinking you’re here when you are not, or if you are it’s only because I really was and the bear was and the stones and the necklaces and the hammering on the fingers and everything you need to be and that when it’s there is there.

Let’s begin by saying this: time flies.

One sees it most especially by night, when the night becomes one more night, Sometimes long, but eventually you feel your eyes pull closed and you say: it’s happening again.  It’s happening again. And sometimes you don’t even notice.

I’m dreaming of a white snowbed. Frosty crystal but not cold. And from the dark black sky huge fluffy snowflakes fall and fall and fall on me. The dark rich sky and the white white snow.

So that when I wake at that time in the morning when the day breaks my night and my warm warm dreams are swollen fuzzy in my head, I can greet the day somehow clean somehow new.

I’m dreaming of something cold like a bucket of water over my head, like falling on my noggin and waking up with a secret power. Or maybe just waking up. But really waking up. Not all this instaneous forgetting. Forgetting before even knowing. Not even noticing.

I’m dreaming of waking up. Rising up out of my slumber. However, whatever it takes, even some foul drink that makes me shiver a second before throwing my arms in the air. Throwing my face in the air. Throwing my voice in the air. Throwing my words.

I’m dreaming of raw things. A trembling hand. You dancing there like a madman. A second before throwing your arms in the air, your heart in the air, your heart.

I’m standing in the corner waiting, sipping a lukewarm drink, talking about nothing. An old woman walks past. She’s searching for something she’s lost. Like a madman.  Something keeps telling me…a second before noticing…she has my walk, my cheeks, my voice,  my eyes, my trembling hands.

Flesh Eaters (1997)

Flesh Eaters is an evening-length multi-media solo show, consisting of thirteen individual pieces woven into a whole.  The work explores gender, political, and identity issues, using movement-based performance, voice, sound, projections, and video.

AntiGone (1997)

Ripping Sophocles’ story out of time and place, it is left to the audience to place it in the context of their own experience.  The production integrates text, sound, projection, and drumming to to envelope the audience on a sensory level.  AntiGone is a piece about structures of power, the loneliness of the choices we make, and the devastating effect of silence in the face of injustice.

Peep Hole (1997)

Peep Hole is the result of an experimental process in layered collaboration.  Five groups focused on a single aspect of production: audio, lighting, video projections, scenic environment, and performance.  The first group worked alone, creating the projections.  Then the second group reviewed and reacted to the projections, creating the audio design.  And so on.  The last group to add to the piece was the performance group.  There was no initial theme, and no discussion between groups until all elements had been added.  The resulting piece is a dreamscape, with recurrent  narrative themes woven throughout of friendship, failure and forgetting.

DreamFire (1998)

An original production based on Strindberg’s A Dream Play.  DreamFire tells the story as a sequence of sensations, images and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind.  The story is of the god Indra’s daughter, who is sent down to earth to find out why human beings suffer.  As in dreams, environments change, images appeared and then disappear, and the sensible becomes nonsensical.  From nowhere, extraordinary and familiar-seeming characters emerge, then vanish.  DreamFire is about the world that we have created for ourselves, the ways we treat each other, and the power of transformation and aspiration.

The Blood of Martyrs (1998)

A performance constructed from words surrounding the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.  The Blood of Martyrs seeks to imagine what the sounds, images, and thoughts were that flashed in the minds of these men in the moments before their execution.  The performance juxtaposes courtroom speeches, anarchist rhetoric, and quotes from Sacco and Vanzetti with burlesque dance and music from their time.

Hamletmachine (1999)

A multi-media techno-gore production of Heiner Muller’s play.  Set against an apocalyptic landscape, the performance assaults the senses of its spectators through loud, driving beats and abrasive sounds, startling images, vivid projections, and intense movement.

War, corruption, deceit, murder and incest race toward the final finish of humanity’s slow suicide.  From the shadows, they watch: Hamlet and Ophelia – archetypes of the modern age.  Hamlet, tangled helplessly by the hopelessness of his own thoughts, has trapped himself in the role of cynical passive observer.  Ophelia, triggered by her disgust and rage, turns in her tears for weapons, and steps from her bedroom into the streets.

“…obvious skill and vision…Weston has a talent for creating dynamic stage compositions.” – EdgeNY

Macbeth (1999)

Pulling Macbeth out of historical context, the Resistance Theater production creates a timeless world through which its spectators may critique their own society.  Through highly stylized intense movement and vibrant stage imagery set in a challenging environment, this production offers a new look at the Macbeth story.

Macbeth’s journey is typical; the pursuit of power almost inevitably leads to corruption.  In the world of Macbeth, brutality is an everyday occurrence, ending in the total banality of evil.

“Bloody, bold, and resolute” – Village Voice