JUNE 10, 2023
Runtime: 40 minutes with no intermission.
Portions of this piece contain the use of haze and rapid movement of light, which some may find challenging.
a performance in four episodes
★ ★ ★
1. Dance of Man
2. Boat to the Tropics & Tango of the Mermaids
3. Huapango and Zandunga
4. Dance of Men and Machines
★ ★ ★
Horses full of steam deconstructs to reimagine visual and topical elements from the almost forgotten 1932 ballet-symphony, H.P. (Horse Power), with music by Carlos Chávez, designs by Diego Rivera, and choreography by Catherine Littlefield. Adopting the ballet's original 4-episode structure, the performance explores the hybridity of Pan-American culture through a magical realist lens.
Concept and Direction
Hilary Brown-Istrefi | HB² PROJECTS
Choreography and Performance
Hilary Brown-Istrefi | HB² PROJECTS in collaboration with:
Sabrina Canas
Maira Duarte
marco farroni leonardo*
* Replacement for dancer Joey Kipp who sadly could not perform his roles due to the passing of a family member.
Music Composition
Mahsa Matin
Narration
Savona Bailey-McClain
Video Projections
Hilary Brown-Istrefi
Sculpture and Flags
Heather Weston
Costumes and Props
Hilary Brown-Istrefi with assistance from Susan Brown and Lamy Istrefi
Lighting Design
Connor Sale
Please continue to Support the Creation of
HORSES FULL OF STEAM:
www.gofundme.com/f/horses-full-of-steam
Graphic by © Heather Weston
Hilary Brown-Istrefi (Choreographer) is a Canadian-American director, choreographer, performer, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. Originally from Toronto, now living in Far Rockaway, she is a graduate of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal, and over the last decade has performed in the works of Melissa Riker, Bouchra Ouizguen, Jillian Peña, Doug Elkins, Linda Tegg, and Candice Breitz. In 2013 she co-founded the award-winning performance collective, Same As Sister (S.A.S.), with her twin Briana Brown-Tipley. Their interdisciplinary commissions have been presented internationally at The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance (Toronto); Base: Experimental Arts + Space (Seattle); Marmo - Libreria d’Arte Contemporanea (Italy); Archaeological Museum of Messenia (Greece); Danspace Project (NYC); Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre (France); BRIC Arts | Media House (NYC); and New York Live Arts (NYC), among other venues. S.A.S. is currently a 2023 HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) artist. Hilary initiated HB² PROJECTS in 2017 as a choreographic platform to expand her collaborations in performance. HB² has presented work throughout NYC as a resident artist at West Harlem Art Fund’s 2020 Visual Muze Residency on Governors Island; Norte Maar’s 2018 Dance at Socrates Residency at Socrates Sculpture Park; and Exploring the Metropolis’ 2017-18 Choreographer + Composer Residency at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning.
www.sameassister.com @sameassister || www.hbsquaredprojects.com @hbsquared_projects
Photo by © YN/OT
Sabrina Canas (Dancer) is a first generation Argentine American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds her BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts (UArts), where she performed works by Jesse Zaritt, Netta Yerushalmy, Helen Simoneau, Marguerite Hemmings, Beth Gill, Sidra Bell, and others. In January 2018, she performed and attended the International Association for Blacks in Dance Conference in Los Angeles, CA, under the direction of Tommie-Waheed Evans and Kim Bears-Bailey and in November 2018, Sabrina produced and presented an immersive installation performance in Solmssen Court, under the direction of Niall Jones. Since moving to Brooklyn, Sabrina has presented a collaborative duet at The Craft: Late Night Performances and Brews, performed at Triskelion Arts, HATCH Performance Series, and Uptown Rising Performance Series, and was also featured in jazz musician Tony Glausi’s music video, “When It All Comes Crashing Down”, premiered in February 2021. Sabrina is currently working with ChrisMastersDance and Kinesis Project in New York, while continuing to make her own work.
www.sabrinacanas.com || @sabrina_canas
Photo by David Flores
Maira Duarte (Dancer) is a Mexican New Yorker artist, educator, and organizer. She directs Dance to the People/Danza para la Gente, a collective that creates waste-less art to demand justice for Indigenous peoples, people of color, and poor and working classes globally, and promotes humanity’s shared responsibility to value life and care for natural resources and the land. Maira has taught for over 14 years at innumerable public schools in NYC and New Jersey through the organizations Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dancewave, The New Victory Theater, and Dance Theater of Harlem. She was also a dance professor at University of The Americas Puebla, Mexico in 2013, and holds an M.A. in Dance Education from New York University. Maira is part of the community project, Escuelita Arrecifes, located in a marginalized neighborhood of Tulum, Mexico where she has implemented several dance and environmental education programs. She also co-runs The Woods, a low-cost rehearsal and performance space in Ridgewood, Queens.
www.dancetothepeople.org || @dttp.nyc
Photo by Marc Mosteirin
marco farroni leonardo (Dancer) is a movement and performance artist from Bonao, Dominican Republic who is based in Seattle and New York. They hold a BFA in dance from The University of the Arts. Their work engages with themes and ideas around home, the body as archive, the Diaspora, and memory. Artistic collaborations include nia love, dani tirrell, Nia-Amina Minor, Amanda Morgan, and Donald Byrd, among others. They have presented work in various venues in Seattle including Velocity Dance Center, Wa Na Wari, Base Arts Space, 10 Degrees Arts, The School of Spectrum Dance Theater, and The Aids Memorial Pathway. @marcofarronileonardo
Photo by Victoria Kovios
Joey Kipp (Dancer) born in Brazil and raised in Mountain View, CA. BA Dance and Biology at Marymount Manhattan College. Joey has worked/collaborated with Heather Kravas, Vic Haven, Zeena Parkins, Cynthia Madansky, luciana achugar, Heidi Latsky, Pioneers Go East Collective, Ani Taj, Steven Hoggett, David Byrne, Yasmine Lee, Bill T. Jones & Janet Wong at the Park Avenue Armory, BAM, The Walker, BRIC, Rauschenberg Residency, La MaMa, and Judson. The NY Times has featured him for his work with Stacy Grossfield, Jody Oberfelder, and Biba Bell. Theater: “Newsies”, “Damn Yankees” (The Rev); Kirsten Childs’ “The Bubbly Black Girl”, “In the Heights”, “The Village” (Dixon Place); “The Miracle of Heliane” choreographed by Cat Galasso and “The Silent Woman” by David Neumann, both directed by Christian Râth (Bard’s Summerscape). Joey most recently choreographed “The Threepenny Opera” at NYU Tisch with director Ash Tata and music director Sean Peter Forte. Thanks to mom, Maria, Hilary & the cast.
@jkippster
Photo by Sean Turi
Mahsa Matin (Composer) is a Brooklyn-based trumpeter and producer whose music blends jazz and Afro-Latin rhythms. She was awarded “Best One Woman Band” as featured in The Best Of - San Francisco Weekly, and has performed at festivals in Mexico, China, and many other venues throughout the West and East Coasts. Mahsa earned her Bachelor of Music in Sonic Arts at the City College of New York. As a musician she believes that you have to have style -- slick, creative, imaginative, and innovative. Style is reflected by how you get from one note to another. It’s not what notes you play, it’s what you do with them. You’ll hear it.
www.mahsamatin.com
Photo courtesy of the artist
Heather Weston (Visual Artist) is a multidisciplinary artist from New Jersey. Her practice speaks about material, mourning, grief, and gender. The work is realized through sculpture, painting, performance, installation, and hand-sewn tapestries. Weston uses iconography of the American West to speak about her inherited body and history within the context of national narratives of pain, power, and control. She creates compositions that appropriate rodeo aesthetics and reinterpret Americana tropes, ideals, tragic heroes, and their cultural associations with the male macho. Weston received her BFA from Parsons in 2012 and MFA from Stony Brook University in 2022. Her latest solo exhibition, “Range of Mourning” took place at Sagtikos Gallery on Long Island. Weston currently lives and works in NYC.
www.heatherlweston.com || @heatherlweston
Photo by Seth Pellum
Savona Bailey-McClain (Narrator) is a Harlem-based curator and arts administrator. For the past 20 years she has been the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the West Harlem Art Fund, which has organized high-profile public art exhibitions across NYC in Times Square, DUMBO, SoHo, Governors Island, and Harlem. Her public art installations encompass sculpture, drawings, performance, sound, and mixed media, and have been covered extensively by The New York Times, Art Daily, Artnet, Los Angeles Times, and Huffington Post, among other publications. She is the host/producer of “State of the Arts NYC” podcast, aired on Podyssey, Radio Public, YouTube, and Mixcloud. Savona is also a member of ArtTable; Advisory Board member of NYC’s Dance in Sacred Places and Governors Island Advisory Council; and new Board member of NY Artists Equity Association.
www.westharlem.art || @wharlemartfund
Photo by Taea Thale
Connor Sale (Lighting Designer) is a New York based lighting designer who was raised in Arizona, but recently moved from Chicago. Recent design credits include “Earth Temple” (in collaboration with Nocturnal Medicine at SMUSH Gallery); Summation Dance/Sikora+Dance Double Bill (Gibney Dance); “This is How We Remember” (Triskelion Arts); “Queen of the Night” (Victory Gardens); and “Sea Change” (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago). He has worked as an Assistant Lighting Designer with the Juilliard School of Drama, The Feath3r Theory, Pig Iron, Urban Bush Women, McCarter Theater Center, JACK, and many more. Additionally, he has been touring with Sadler’s Wells’ production of Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring”. Connor’s interested in the organic way that light moves, especially by the way light affects movement and the way movement affects light.
www.connorsale.com || @connorsalelight
Photo courtesy of the artist
Anna Wotring (Director of Production), a Pittsburgh native, is a community-minded dance artist, designer, and production stage manager committed to the practice of collaborative leadership. She currently works with Annie Heath, Lauren Horn, Jennifer Nugent and slowdanger as a technical design consultant, dancer, and production stage manager. Wotring obtained her BFA in Dance at the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a multitude of dance organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is beyond excited to begin working and imagining with the Trisk team.
@annaissupercool
Special Thanks
HB² PROJECTS gratefully acknowledges public support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and The New York State Council on the Arts and private support from the Harkness Foundation for Dance; Howard Gilman Foundation; and Mertz Gilmore Foundation towards the Trisk Presents 2023 Resident Artist Program.
HB² PROJECTS also acknowledges the individual donors who generously contributed to the Horses full of steam GoFundMe campaign.
Endless thanks to the entire HFS and Trisk teams for bringing me closer to my vision for this project. The journey continues . . .
We respectfully acknowledge that the work of Triskelion Arts is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape peoples. We pay our respects to their land, water, and ancestors, past, present, and future. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and to learning to be better stewards of this land.
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