HEBEL
Life is fleeting. Life is hebel. Dance is fleeting. Dance too is hebel. And it brings delight.
Jay Wegman, Executive Director of NYU Skirball
Slovak-American Choreographer, Director and Designer Pavel Zuštiak creates an evening-length performance work HEBEL, commissioned by NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and presented by La MaMa on October 19-22, 2023. Zuštiak teams up with scenographer Keith Skretch, composer Christian Frederickson and lighting designer Masha Tsimring—merging the non-narrative qualities of dance with image-based forms and reaching spectators as a totalizing multi-sensory experience.
Through an interdisciplinary, strongly visual and textured approach, Zuštiak mines the themes of fleeting human ambition, presence and meaning. HEBEL takes its name from the ancient Book of Ecclesiastes, where the word appears there 38 times, and yet continues to prompt ongoing discourse. Hebel translates as vanity, but also breath, vapor, emptiness, and absurdity; it lies at the heart of the Book’s key question: “What do you gain from all your work?” HEBEL reflects on temporal human efforts and individual life’s worth, as well as the fleeting nature of life and live performance. HEBEL draws us into an evocative, emotionally charged exploration of life’s quest for meaning where the turbulent past and present are alive and the future is envisioned.
Production Supported by:
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
GIBNEY Dance in Process Residency supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
The Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation
Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY
Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Council for the Arts at MIT
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council
Residencies
Bogliasco Foundation, Italy
GIBNEY Dance in Process Residency supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, NYC
Baryshnikov Arts Center supported by Princess Grace Foundation-USA
Movement Research, New York, NY
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA
La MaMa, NYC
Production: Palissimo Company, New York, NY
Presented by: La MaMa at the Ellen Stewart Theatre on October 19-22, 2023, New York, NY
Commissioned by: NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, New York, NY
CREDITS
Concept, Direction, Choreography and Costume Design: Pavel Zuštiak
Created in collaboration with performers: Christine Bonansea, Wendell Gray II, Emma Judkins, Doug LeCours
Original Music and Sound Design: Christian Frederickson
Scenography: Keith Skretch
Lighting Design: Masha Tsimring
Set Construction: Joseph Silovsky Studios, Ryan Holsopple
Production Manager: George Del Barrio
Originating HEBEL creative team working towards the 2020 world premiere which was indefinitely postponed due to COVID pandemic: Rachel Berman (Dancer), Joe Levasseur (Lighting Design), Megan Carter (Dramaturgical Advisor), Simon Harding (Scenic and Video Associate and Props), Bill Kennedy (Props), Christina Tang (Production Manager), Sandy Garner (Producer)
HEBEL is a Palissimo production, commissioned by the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. HEBEL was developed in part during a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC and awarded through the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Works in Progress residency program. HEBEL was researched, developed and honed with financial, administrative and residency support from Dance in Process at Gibney with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; created with the support of a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship; supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, by the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY and Harkness Foundation for Dance; and funded in part by the Council for the Arts at MIT. HEBEL was made possible through a 2019 Movement Research Residency, funded by the Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund and supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additionally, HEBEL was made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Production design support provided by the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York). The music was commissioned by the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation.