Mary Kate Sheehan

Yvonne Rainer has created a contemporary version of her iconic 1965 work Parts of Some Sextets, a dance originally performed by 10 people and 12 mattresses, in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Emily Coates.

The 1965 cast comprised Lucinda Childs, Judith Dunn, Sally Gross, Deborah Hay, Tony Holder, Robert Morris, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Schlichter. The original score depicts a matrix of movements in which each participant performs an assigned act for 30 seconds, cued by phrases in a voiceover of Rainer reading from The Diary of William Bentley, 1793-1802, an eighteenth century American Episcopal minister who lived in Salem, Massachusetts and wrote a detailed account of local events over a forty year period.

The new 2019 cast for Parts of Some Sextets comprises Rachel Berman, Emily Coates, Brittany Engel-Adams, Patrick Gallagher, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jon Kinzel, artists Liz Magic Laser and Nick Mauss, Mary Kate Sheehan, David Thomson, Timothy Ward. Rainer and Coates worked together with the group to create the 2019 version using about 5/8 of the original score and photographs from the Peter Moore Photography Archive. The last section of choreography has been newly created by Rainer. This contemporary version of Parts of Some Sextets will offer audiences the opportunity to experience a transformative moment in Rainer’s history—one that through its scant representation in photos—has gained mythical status. —Performa19

Parts of Some Sextets received recognition by The New York Times in their Best of 2019: Dance.

Reviews & Interviews for Parts of Some Sextets:

Performa19 Biennial Information

The New York Times by Gia Kourlas

Frieze Interview with Yvonne Rainer

Dance Magazine Interview with Yvonne Rainer & Emily Coates

Photos courtesy of Performa NYC and Paula Court.

PERFORMER in Trio A with Flags, Talking Solo, We Shall Run, and Chair/Pillow

Through live performance, film, photography, sculptural objects, musical scores, poetry, and archival materials, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done traces the history of Judson Dance Theater both in and outside the church, from the workshops that took place there to other spaces around downtown New York. Artists in the exhibition include George Brecht, Trisha Brown, John Cage, Al Carmines, Lucinda Childs, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Diane Di Prima, Bill Dixon, Rosalyn Drexler, Judith Dunn, Simone Forti, Gene Friedman, David Gordon, Anna Halprin, Lawrence Halprin, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Fred Herko, Storm De Hirsch, Jill Johnston, LeRoi Jones, Allan Kaprow, Fred McDarrah, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Aileen Passloff, Steve Paxton, Rudy Perez, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolee Schneemann, Elaine Summers, Cecil Taylor, Stan VanDerBeek, James Waring, Robert Whitman, Phyllis Yampolsky, and La Monte Young.

PERFORMER in Trio A, Trio A Facing, Talking Solo, and Chair/Pillow

Yvonne Rainer, Early Work, 1963–1969, performed live at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin, 2018. Featuring early works by Yvonne Rainer, reconstructed choreography by Pat Catterson, and dancers Stav Bar-Nahum Frank, Ty Boomershine, Dimitrios Mytilinaios and Mary Kate Sheehan. Images courtesy IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art). Photography Luca Truffarelli.

DANCER

Performer with KEIGWIN + COMPANY (Larry Keigwin, Artistic Director) in Canvas at New York City Center for Vail Dance Festival: ReMix NYC (directed by Damian Woetzel), Episodes at Greenbox Arts Festival (Colorado) for the K+C Celebrates Bernstein Tour, and Dance at the Gym community project in NYC hosted by Hunter College.

hyperobject is a minimal dance piece for three performers by M. Eugenia Demeglio. The flow is relentless, repetitive; a mechanism that once started cannot be stopped. Movements are deconstructed to fragments and reconstructed by repetition, while small permutations give space to imperceptible changes and generate the path for interpretation.

The work emerges through the ensemble, through the orchestration of its different elements, residing particularly in the spacing and timing of each performer. Like a Mandelbrot fractal, the more one witnesses its unfolding, the more it hypnotizes the viewer with permutations of the same object.

Despite its apparent simplicity, hyperobject is in fact a complex piece, drawing inspiration from, and building on, the minimalist dance and music legacy of the 1970s, which sidestepped smooth flow in favor of the improvised, the distracting, the recondite.

The term hyperobject was coined by Timothy Morton in 2008, in order to describe “a real event or phenomenon so vast that it is beyond human comprehension”.

The research for the piece started in 2019 and was suspended due to the Covid19 pandemic.
hyperobject premiered on 22nd May 2021 at ARC for Dance Festival – Municipal Theatre of Piraeus (GR)

Research: M. Eugenia Demeglio, Maria Vourou
Development: M. Eugenia Demeglio, Maria Vourou, Pagona Boulbasakou,Themis-Ariadne Andreoulaki
Performance: Maria Vourou, Areti Athanasopoulou, Mary Kate Sheehan
Music: Jeph Vanger

Watch hyperobject here

DANCER

Dancer and Collaborator with Julia Ehrstrand and Ehrstrand Dance Collective since 2015. Performances include FIDCDMX Festival (Mexico City, Mexico), Seed Dance Company Workshop & Collaboration (Pingtung, Taiwan), Dansforum Festival (Sweden), Bryant Park (NYC), Peridance Capezio Center Gala at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (NYC), and more. Mary Kate is also a collaborating teacher and choreographer within Ehrstrand Dance Collective and has lead workshops in Sweden, Taiwan, and Mexico in professional, pre-professional, and community outreach settings.

Read about Ehrstrand Dance Collective here.

DANCER

Credits include: Dancer and Female Swing for Dream’d in a Dream at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival 2015 and Dancer in Opera Lafayette’s Les Fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour, ou Les Dieux d'Égypte at Lincoln Center New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

DANCER & CO-CHOREOGRAPHER

ekleipsis is a solo performance created by Tyler Gilstrap and Mary Kate Sheehan. The Ancient Greek word ékleipsis means “an abandonment,” “a downfall,” or “the darkening of a heavenly body.” Our modern day English eclipse refers to the astronomical event of a celestial body being temporarily obscured either by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This solo is one woman's journey of personal eclipse, delving into a past of fragmented memories and experiencing how these fragments inform, direct, and shadow her present. How does the past obscure the present? How can the present ignite the past while still moving us forward?

All photographs by Justin Chao Photography. Video courtesy of Meg Buzza.

“interactive theatre meeting modern dance in a futuristic art museum”  Engadget.com

DANCE CAPTAIN

Right Passage begins a new series of interactive performance installations for TWF — rites of passage.

In this work we invite the public to choose their own adventure through a magico-religious dynamistic rite of passage. We begin in a hazed void, seven hooded liminal guides shift black monolithic walls creating reflective labyrinths/corridors/chaos which lead your journey from darkness to light.  A sensory disorientation escalates to an assault of cold beams, strobes, and intimidating moving walls — a haunting chaos.  This builds to a breaking point, leads to a re-orientation of the senses.

We gather collectively at the end of the disorienting journey, united underneath the warmth of a sun.

Did we make the “right passage?”  What IS “right?”  What IS wrong?  What fun is life in black and white?  The strong human need to be “right” is questioned.  Listen.  Breathe.  Perhaps an alternate passage awaits.

Panorama Music Festival, NYC within The Lab Powered by HP

All photos, video, and text courtesy of The Windmill Factory and Will O’Hare Photography. Scenic Choreography by Tyler Gilstrap.