MANCC Welcomes Dayna Hanson
Dayna Hanson (WA) FSU Alumnus Choreographic Fellow | May 13 – 25, 2013
Collaborators
Performers:
Thomas Graves
Wade Madsen
Peggy Piancenza
Dave Proscia
Sarah Rudinoff
Assistant Director:
Andalyn Young
Hailing from Washington state, Dayna Hanson comes to MANCC to develop The Clay Duke. The hybrid new work is based loosely on a 2010 school board shooting in Panama City, Florida. Commissioned by On the Boards and produced in association with ArKtype, The Clay Duke is a work of devised dance theater that blends details from the 2010 school board shooting with investigations of Anton Chekhov and the vigilantism of the 1970s Death Wish crime film franchise. Bringing these various sources together under the creative umbrella of this singular play, Hanson hopes to paint a compelling, transcendentally ambivalent picture of humanity—one that, by attempting to understand society’s most damaged goods, encourages a hopeful view of the world.
While The Clay Duke is not intended as a literal rendering or documentary performance of the shooting, the details of the event—including staging, characters, rhythm, theatrical arc, physicality and dialogue—will deeply influence and shape the work. The Clay Duke is a redemption play out of a contemporary news story that is strikingly banal, wretched and deeply human. Pivoting around a man who, bankrupt of personal and moral resources, seeks vindication for his hardships from a world that doesn’t understand his logic, The Clay Duke uses its own strange performance logic to discover hope in a grim story.
Hanson combines dance, music, and theater for her own brand of irreverent and cutting social commentary rooted in a compassionate sense of our shared humanity. This will be the first major residency for The Clay Duke outside of Seattle and will be used to develop the character and choreographic base of the work to inform the overall structure of the piece.
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Dayna Hanson is a Seattle-based choreographer, filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist. Co-founder of dance theater company 33 Fainting Spells, Dayna’s work has been presented nationally and internationally since the early 1990s. Her dance films have screened at film festivals worldwide, including New York Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. Dayna’s 2010 dance theater piece, Gloria’s Cause, was commissioned by On the Boards and toured North America in 2011-12. Based loosely on Gloria’s Cause, Dayna’s first feature film, a hybrid narrative dance film called Improvement Club, premiered as one of eight films out of 1,200 submissions to be screened in South By Southwest Film Festival’s Narrative Competition in 2013.
Her choreography was seen recently in the work of Austin-based Rude Mechs (I’ve ever Been So Happy, 2011) and Korean film director Tae Yong Kim (Late Autumn, 2011). Her new work, The Clay Duke, is inspired by a Florida school board shooting; produced by ArKtype, The Clay Duke is being developed in residency at MANCC, On the Boards and West of Lenin and will premiere in 2013.
Dayna is 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography, a 2010 United States Artists Oliver Fellow in Dance and a 2012 recipient of Artist Trust’s Arts Innovator Award. Her work has received support from the National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, National Performance Network and others. She plays bass guitar and keyboards in Today!
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Please visit www.mancc.org/artists/dayna-hanson/ or email info@mancc.org for additional information about Hanson’s residency.