The Crowd...Action and Mass Emotion
(1987)
The Crowd...was especially commissioned by DTW's FIRST LIGHT project through a grant from the Jerome Foundation, St. Paul, MN.
The Crowd...Action and Mass Emotion (22 minutes)
Directed and Choreographed by Stephan Koplowitz
Music Score and Live Percussion by Jack Freudenheim
Dramaturgy and Assistant Director: Jonathon Ward
Lighting Design by Roma Flowers
Set Design/Xerography: Stephan Koplowitz
Costumes by David Robinson
Performers: Josh Broder, Paul lazar, Molly Hickok, Jody Reiss, Terry Greiss, Nicole Potter, Carl Frano, Mindy Pfeffer, Kathleen Hill, Ann Hirsch, Barbara Boolukos, Amy Benesch, Paul Karasik and Charles Halden, Dance Theater Workshop, NYC, June 4-7, 1987
PRESS QUOTE:
“Koplowitz’s major new piece, The Crowd…Action and Mass Emotion, with a cast of 14, including members of the Irondale Ensemble Project, is a tightly designed piece in which the group-from which people depart to verbally express their specialness or haplessness-keeps reforming as a swaying clump, as a neatly raying circle of crawling bodies. The Crowd pressed forward with a wrought up intensity….”
Burt Supree-Village Voice, June 23, 1987
Backstory Stories:
In the Spring of 1986, I was invited to be a part of the panel to select the next Fresh Track participants at Dance Theater Workshop. During our marathon session of seeing over 30 or so different works, a NYC theater company (Irondale Ensemble Project, still very active today under the executive direction of Terry Greiss and featured in this work) auditioned a work choreographed by Anna B Parsons (who with her husband Paul Lazar, featured in this work), went on to great acclaim with their wonderful company Big Dance Theater, which also featured Molly Hickok, also part of this work, for many years). I LOVED the work and tried hard to get them accepted (to no avail). When David White (DTW's Executive Producer) offered me my first full season at DTW, I remembered the incredible energy of those performers and approached the company with an offer of engaging the entire company for a set number of weeks to take part in my creative process leading towards my first season in the spring of 1987. I supplemented their ensemble with two colleagues from the Packer Collegiate Institute where I was teaching dance: Kathleen Hill who taught dance with me (and was featured in the first incarnation of To My Anatomy) and Paul Karasik who was on the art faculty at Packer (and is a well known cartoonist).
The live and recorded score, by composer/percussionist Jack Freudenheim, pre-saged our own collaboration by a few months in 1987 on Fenestrations in Grand Central Terminal (and other future projects).
The backdrop/set was my second large scale composite photo creation using xerography, the first was for my work
Untitled (Ethiopia Suite) in 1986.
GALLERY- photos by Tom Brazil
