In partnership with the Center for Ballet and the Arts

Left and Right is a collaboration between composer/performer Molly Joyce, dancer Jerron Herman, writer Max Greyson, and director Austin Regan to examine historical myths of the left versus right side. The work specifically explores  the traditionally cursed and dark left side of the body, sourcing stories from ancient Mesopotamians to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. These societies collectively held strong biases against the left hand, often relegated  to  curses and inflicting injury while the right hand was considered healing and beneficent. Left and Right intersects, overlaps, diverges, and collaborates through the disparate yet synergic disciplines of dance and music, with a digital film presentation to unite and contrast the two. The work will incorporate accessibility as aesthetic; including open captions, sign language interpretation, and audio and sound descriptions, with contributions from curator Sandy Guttman and more. This presentation is part of Molly’s season-long fellowship with National Sawdust and the Center for Ballet and the Arts.

Accessibility: For accessibility purposes, open captioning, audio description, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation will be provided for the virtual program. If you have further questions about accessibility for the program, please email marketingadmin@nationalsawdust.org.

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Bios: 

Molly Joyce was recently deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her music has been described as a vessel of “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire);“unwavering” and “enveloping” (Vulture). Her work draws on disability as a creative source. After suffering an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, one of her primary mediums became an electric vintage toy organ—an instrument she bought on eBay that engages her disability on a compositional and performative level.

Joyce’s creative projects have been presented at TEDxMidAtlantic, Bang on a Can Marathon, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Classical:NEXT; and featured in outlets such as Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, WNYC’s “New Sounds”, and I Care If You Listen. Her compositional works have been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Vermont, New World, New York Youth, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, as well as the New Juilliard, Decoda, and Contemporaneous ensembles. Additionally, she has written for publications 21CM, Disability Arts Online, and collaborated across disciplines, including with visual artists Lex Brown and Julianne Swartz, choreographers Melissa Barak and Jerron Herman, director Austin Regan, and writers Marco Grosse and Christopher Oscar Peña.

Joyce is a graduate of The Juilliard School, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Yale School of Music, and an alumna of the National YoungArts Foundation. She currently serves on the composition faculty at New York University, Steinhardt.

Austin Regan is an NYC-based director of opera, theater, and video. Recent works include Out of a Thought with Molly Joyce for PROTOTYPE; Rigoletto at Minnesota Opera (". . . a scorching take on politics, patriarchy, and power," Minneapolis Star Tribune); Discount Ghost Stories at Local Theater Co ("Hauntingly beautiful," Boulder Daily Camera); Loose Wet Perforated (Guerilla Opera), The Trojan Women (The Hangar Theatre); Mad Libs (New World Stages); Well Worn Words (Ars Nova); The Blind (The Flea Theater). As asst/associate director, he has worked on four Broadway shows, the Metropolitan Opera, and Off-Broadway's Little Shop of Horrors. Austin is a Drama League Fellow.

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Max Greyson is a poet, theater writer and spoken word performer from Antwerp, Belgium. He has been touring in Europe since 2011, writing and performing in the music theatre productions of the Un-Label Performing Arts Company, based in Cologne. In 2015, he became vice-champion at the Dutch National Championships of Poetry Slam in the Netherlands, receiving acclaim as “lyrical poet and the innovator of phrases”. In 2016, his debut collection of poems Madness doesn’t settle was published by De Arbeiderspers, and  nominated for the Jo Peters Poetry Prize. This year, his second collection of poems, Et alors, was published. Greyson is the artistic director of ARType vzw, an organization that features the music theatre collective Voyeurs. Their second music theatre production, Voyeurs in BXL, premiered in 2019. As of 2019, he holds a position as researcher at the Antwerp Royal Conservatoire. His project ArtInAD is an artistic research project of integrated audio-description for the blind and visually impaired in music theatre.

Jerron Herman (he/him) is a disabled artist working in dance and text to facilitate welcoming. From late 2018 to 2019, he produced four world premiere commissions for Gibney, Performance Space New York, The Whitney Museum, and Danspace Project, including excerpts at The Kennedy Center. Jerron has served on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA since 2017, most recently as Vice Chair. As a model, he has shot campaigns for Tommy Hilfiger, Chromat, and Nike, and consulted on issues of inclusion. From 2019-2020, Jerron curated the series "Access Check 2.0: Mapping Accessibility" for the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. He also writes extensively on art & culture. Jerron was named a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The New York Times has called him "the inexhaustible Mr. Herman".

Sandy Guttman (Accessibility Consultant) - Sandy Guttman is an Assistant Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where she has supported a number of projects including Manifesto: Art x Agency, Pat Steir: Color Wheel, Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors and Yoko Ono: Four Works for Washington DC and the World. Guttman attended the Museum and Exhibition Studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she conducted research on creating accessible programming within cultural space, through staging public programs featuring disability artists in collaboration with the Bodies of Work Festival. She has an interest in museum inclusivity and is working to bring accessible programs to the Hirshhorn through the museum's Accessibility Task Force. She is a founding editor of the arts and culture publication FWD: Museums.

Brandon Kazen-Maddox (ASL Interpreter) - Brandon Kazen-Maddox is a Grandchild of Deaf Adults (GODA) and third-generation native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). Having grown up in Washington State, he moved to San Francisco, CA in 2010 to work as a professional circus acrobat for seven years, where he also worked as an acrobat and dancer in the San Francisco Opera. Brandon moved to New York City in 2017 and in May 2019, graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a Master of Fine Arts in Dance and New Technology. Brandon currently works as a professional ASL interpreter and choreographer in New York City as well as remotely. Through his multimedia ASL production company Body Language Productions, Inc., Brandon collaborates with and provides opportunities for Deaf artists who share his passion for bringing artistic works of American Sign Language Dance Theater to the stage, screen and beyond. For more information, follow his Instagram/Twitter accounts @bkazenmaddox, his facebook page @facebook.com/brandonkazenmaddox, visit his website, www.brandonkazen-maddox.com, or email him at bkm296@nyu.edu.

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