The Moving Memory Project: What We Share
Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup and David Shenk present The Moving Memory Project: What We Share on Friday, April 5th at 8pm at Broadway Presbyterian Church, 601 W. 114th Street New York, NYC.
Launched in 2019, The Moving Memory Project embodies its founders’ vision of bringing together artists, caregivers, and seniors to create a community of care surrounding issues connected to memory loss and destigmatizing the diagnosis of dementia, with the goal of raising awareness, to increase funding, until a cure is found. “Works like this can help the world think and talk about Alzheimer's in important new ways” says co-producer David Shenk, whose writings on Alzheimer's and dementia garnered him international acclaim as an authority on the subject.
PROGRAM DETAILS
The evening begins with an interactive series of questions, hosted by Bruce Roberts, designed to unite people through unexpected discoveries about what they have in common, followed by a solo performance of Nelson’s latest iteration of Nostra Dea by Paige Doku, a 28-minute extended version featuring original music by Jonah Kreitner and Borut Krzisnik, culminating in a post-performance discussion led by David Shenk who will discuss exciting breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s related research.
Nostra Dea credits:
Performed by Paige Doku
Soundtrack by Borut Krzisnik, Jonah Kreitner, Philip Glass, and Swedish House Mafia
Light Design by Lauren Parrish
Inspired by the play Nostra Dea (Our Goddess) written by Massimo Bontempelli in 1925. The protagonist is memoryless. Multiple identities, traits, and appearances meet on this constantly renewed blank slate. Without any sense of self or past, Dea bridges the gap between human and other, questioning our sense of self and others with evolving identities and renewed behaviors.
Previous iterations of Dea in solo, trio, and larger groups have been presented at the Festival Quartiers Danses in Montréal, Motore 592 in Lucca, Indiana University, and Les Champs Mélisey in Burgundy. This research will culminate into an evening-length piece to premiere in 2025 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the play.
This event is made possible, in part, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the West Harlem Development Corporation; the New York State Council on the Arts, and space grants from Theaterlab and Dance Italia.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Stefanie Nelson (Concept, Producer) Stefanie Nelson founded and directs Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup (SND), a contemporary performance group based in NYC; DANCE ITALIA, an international summer dance festival in Lucca, Italy, and Motore592, a bold new contemporary arts center in Lucca, IT. She approaches her work, described as 'instinctual, untamed, and edgy' intuitively, distilling deeply personal ideas into highly kinetic, expressive, and provocative works rooted in cross-media collaboration with artists working in music, video, and visual arts. SND has been presented in Canada, Mexico, Italy, and the US. Entering the dance field as a performer, notably as a soloist with Anna Sokolow’s Player’s Project, Nelson is an accomplished teacher as well having been invited to many studios and educational institutions worldwide. The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) identified her as an ‘Emerging Leader’ in the field of dance providing a year-long mentorship. She's served as a Choreography panelist for NYFA's prestigious Artists’ Fellowship awards as well as for the Joyce Theater and local NYC-based dance festivals. Nelson collaborated with fashion designer Terrence Zhou / Bad Binch TONGTONG for his New York Fashion Week SS23 debut and SS24 performance. She choreographed Plan-B, a feature film starring Diane Keaton and has collaborated with AHRC NYC, a disabilities service org. to provide over 100 annual creative empowerment workshops free of charge to intellectually and /or physically disabled dancers since 2014. Additional community initiatives include the Moving Memory Project with NY-times bestselling author, David Shenk, a Young Artists program that specifically provides research and performance opportunities for movement-based artists between the ages of 15-23, and Creative Movement classes for children ages 5-7.
David Shenk (Co-producer) is the award-winning and national bestselling author of six books, including The Genius in All of Us ("deeply interesting and important" – The New York Times), The Forgetting ("remarkable" – The Los Angeles Times), Data Smog ("indispensable" – The New York Times), and The Immortal Game ("superb" – The Wall Street Journal). He is a popular lecturer, a short-film director/producer, and a contributor to National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Nature Biotechnology, Harper's, Spy, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, NPR, and BBC. PBS’s "The Forgetting," inspired by Shenk’s book, won an Emmy in 2004. In 2006, the book The Forgetting was featured in Sarah Polley's Oscar-nominated film "Away From Her." Shenk has advised the President's Council on Bioethics on dementia-related issues, served as a Senior Advisor to Cure Alzheimer's Fund, and is the Creator/Executive Producer of the "Living with Alzheimer's" film project. Shenk lives in Brooklyn.
Paige Doku (Dancer) is originally from Leicester, Massachusetts. She received her early training at the Hanover Theater Conservatory, where she studied classical ballet, modern and contemporary. Doku proceeded to attend the Boston Conservatory at Berklee where she received a BFA in contemporary dance performance in 2023. Along with her collegiate studies, Paige simultaneously trained with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel. She has performed works by Kate Weare, Victor Quijada, Stefanie Nelson, Maya Orchin, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano and Rami Be’er, among others.
Borut Krzisnik is a Slovenian composer of contemporary music, based in Ljubljana. With his unique way of composing, Borut Krzisnik integrates live playing and music software on computer platform, and breaks free from confines of specific methodologies. Intensity, diversity and exciting changes are the main characteristics of his music. The key moment in his musical stories is not only emphasising contrasts but rather building bridges between them. Confronting the differences till they dance or burn together. Avant-garde or popular, tonality or atonality, genre or non-genre, underground or academic - these are the extremes between which he moves easily. Using a polyglot musical language the composer weaves a thread through all these contrasts and introduces them to us with inspiring optimism.
Bruce Roberts (Host) is an Actor and Producer with numerous credits on and off the stage. National audiences have seen Bruce in productions such as Man of La Mancha with John Davidson, Guys & Dolls, 1776, The Odd Couple, and the feature films Cry Baby, Bullets Over Broadway, and Her Alibi. Bruce can also be seen on the small screen on HBO's The Sopranos, Showtime's Billions, and ABC's The Unusuals. As a Voice Artist, Bruce can be heard on numerous commercials, voice-overs, podcasts, and industrial events. As a Producer, Bruce has worked on the Broadway and National Tours of the Tony & Peabody Award-winning Having Our Say and Annie Warbucks, Crazy For You, Jekyll & Hyde, as well as dozens of corporate events. In October 2022, Bruce was engaged by the prestigious culinary firm Bowen & Co. to serve as the Technical Producer of the Inaugural Bahamas Culinary Arts Festival at the Baha Mar Resort, Nassau, The Bahamas. As part of the festival, Bruce and his team became the only production company ever to build a concert stage in the middle of an active Wave Pool. This season, Bruce will be Producing the Tectonic Theater Companies' production of Here There Are Blueberries, which will have its New York premiere next week at the New York Theater Workshop. Bruce lives in Harlem with his wife, Babette, and his sons, Bennet & Brent.