NEWS

12/2/22

nY Times names “Radioactive practice” one of the best performances of 2022

“In ‘Radioactive Practice,’ Abby Zbikowski showed the distinct way that she views dance. It’s highly physical and sweat-inducing, but it also reveals something about what happens when an athletic act becomes a spiritual one. At New York Live Arts, her performers, fluent in many styles from postmodern dance and hip-hop to synchronized swimming and martial arts, took center stage for dancing that spoke about a body’s history, its conditioning. The music was blissfully loud.” —Gia Kourlas, NY Times

Click here for link to article

5/17/22

Abby z and the New utility in the NY Times

Dance Writer Gia Kourlas writes about the ethos and evolution of abby zbikowski’s choreographic work

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Abby Zbikowski Awarded a 2020 United States Artists Fellowship

The United States Artists (USA) announced that Abby Zbikowski is one of of fifty recipients of their 2020 USA Fellow award.  Each of the fifty recipients will receive a $50,000 cash award of unrestricted funds. Read more about this prestigious award here<—

Abby Z and the New utility Artistic Director receives “choreographer of the Future” commission by Dance Umbrella uk

“In 2018 all three of Dance Umbrella’s Artistic Directors – Val Bourne CBE, Betsy Gregory and Emma Gladstone – invited an established artist from their time at the helm to nominate a ‘choreographer of the future’ as part of a new commissioning project, Four by Four, to celebrate Dance Umbrella’s 40th anniversary.  Four by Four is a transformational intervention for these young artists as they emerge as dance makers and create a piece of repertoire which, after premiering in London, is then available for touring worldwide.”

Read more about this commission here<—

Abby Z and the New Utility Receive a Nation performance Network(NPN) Creation and performance fund Award for thier new work “radioactive Practice”

“NEW ORLEANS (June 29, 2018) – The National Performance Network (NPN) announces its 2018 Creation & Development Fund Awards totaling $305,000 in support of 14 new artistic works across disciplines, geographies and cultures. The selected artists reflect NPN’s commitments to equity and access through the arts.” Read more about this grant here<—

Works

• RADIOACTIVE PRACTICE(2022) Choreographer Abby Zbikowski and crew have created a genre- bending work that brings together a mosaic group of dancers to redefine purpose for themselves as they labor their way through complex, demanding, and often perplexing physicality as a means to confront expectations and dive into the unknown head on. Utilizing the skills they have honed through their practices in movement traditions including (but not limited to) street dance, post-modern dance, contemporary African forms, tap, synchronized swimming, soccer, and martial arts, the cast draws from an arsenal of physical possibility to shatter assumptions of
  established forms and test the group’s own physical and mental limits. Working with Senegalese dance artist Momar Ndiaye as dramaturge, this work embodies the amalgam of contemporary living, chock full of cultural collisions, unlikely relationships, minor to major misunderstandings, a desire for logic, and being hard-wired to survive.
  
  
  

  Cast: Alex Gossen, Kashia Kancey, Fiona Lundie, Jennifer Meckley, Ben Roach, Jinsei Sato

  
  
  

• abandoned playground(2017) Inside the intimate stadium setup of this work, 9 dancers rip through the space performing complex sequences of hyper-physical dance that push their understandings of their own capabilities and endurance. Recognized with the 2017 Juried Bessie Award for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures,” Abby Zbikowski generates her bold, high-intensity, precisely rhythmic choreography from her background of hip-hop, tap, West African, and postmodern dance styles, deeply-rooted punk aesthetic, and close collaboration with her dancers who bring their specific bodies, psychologies, and training histories to the work. In this evening length work Zbikowski highlights each of her dancers' unique strengths and simultaneously forges an intense ensemble connection in that through vocalizations and the channeling of communal energy the dancers invigorate each other to overcome the physical and mental exhaustion of performing such extreme and virtuosic movement at the relentless pace required. Like life, no overstated purpose is given, but as the New York Times dance critic Siobhan Burke surmises "the effort justifies itself."

      To read Siobhan Burke's NY Times review click    here...

       To read Eva Yaa Assantewaa's InfiniteBody review click here...

• on the line(2016) is a solo made in order to unknow absolutes and discover a new breed of limits within ourselves. Made in collaboration with dancer Jessie Young, this work exposes the intimate process of relearning your body while reinventing personal definitions of dance, technique, and form.

• double nickels on the dime(2015)is a duet made in collaboration with longtime dancers Fiona Lundie and Jennifer Meckley exploring the psychology of of aesthetics and physical practice of climbing deep inside known form. It was presented as part of the Movement Research Festival Fall 2015 - "Vanishing Points" at Danspace Project.

To read Eva Yaa Assantewaa's InfiniteBody

review click here...

• destabilizer(2014) is a jigsaw puzzle of effort and weight. Made in collaboration with Jennifer Meckley and Fiona Lundie for the inaugural season of DoublePlus curated by Bebe Miller at the Gibney Dance Center in New York City, this duet work features the labor of unsteady ground as dancers negotiate the soles of their feet being duct taped together and the physical and emotional residue of that brutal connection.

        To read Eva Yaa Assantewaa's InfiniteBody review click here... 

• "jm."(2013) is a solo based on the intense and necessary relationship performer Jennifer Meckley has to practice and the masochistic yet hopeful space it holds in her life.

• the new utility(2012) is performed in the round, synthesizes the mechanics of disparate movement genres into a singular hybrid event focused on form and the composition of watching. Through the decomposition of structure, and performer endurance, audiences are exposed humility in formality and the significance held in the ways we move through and observe the world.

Works made with/for students

tectonic(2018) Footprints choreographer at the American Dance Festival

heavy planet(2016) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

under the asphalt(2016) University of Texas at Austin

taking off(2016) American Dance Festival

'till we collapse(2015) American Dance Festival

Brute Force(2013) The Ohio State University

striking space(2012) The Ohio State University

Bios

Company Abby Z and the New Utility

Choreographer Abby Zbikowski created Abby Z and the New Utility in 2012 with dancers Fiona Lundie and Jennifer Meckley to experiment with the potential and choreographic possibility of the body being pushed beyond perceived limits, creating a new movement lexicon that triangulates dancing/moving bodies across multiple cultural value systems simultaneously. In 2016, Abby expanded to a group of nine performer/collaborators for Zbikowski’s first evening length commission. abandoned playground premiered to a sold-out run at the Abrons Arts Center in New York in April 2017, leading to Zbikowski being honored with the Juried Bessie Award. Abby Z and the New Utility have been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Boston ICA, 92nd St Y, Movement Research at Danspace Project, Gibney Dance Center, The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, and the Fusebox Festival in Austin,TX, among others. From diverse training and cultural backgrounds, Abby Z and the New Utility works collaboratively to build a hybrid form that welcomes audiences from a range of understandings of dance/movement and reflects a wider contemporary cultural conversation.

Artistic Director

Abby Zbikowski (she/her)is a choreographer creating contemporary dance works that pay homage to the effort of living, tactics of survival, and the aesthetics produced as a result, utilizing the physical aspects and psyche-emotional experience of her rigorous training in African and Afro-diasporic forms, playing sports, and performing manual labor. She founded Abby Z and the New Utility in 2012and received the 2017 Juried Bessie Award for her “unique and utterly authentic movement vocabulary in complex and demanding structures to create works of great energy, intensity, surprise, and danger.” In 2018 she received a “Choreographer of theFuture” commission from Dance Umbrella UK and in 2020 a United States Artists Fellowship. She is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-In-Residence at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, currently artist-in-residence at New York Live Arts, and formerly at Bates Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics. She is currently an Associate Professor of Dance at The Ohio State University, formerly at the University of Illinois and on faculty at the American Dance Festival. She has taught at the Academy of Culture in Riga, Latvia; at Festival Un Pas Vers L’Avant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and studied at Germaine Acogny’s L’École des Sables in Senegal. Zbikowski has created commissioned work for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and numerous universities throughout the country.

Founding members

Fiona Lundie (she/her) is a movement artist and cognitive scientist interested in what is vital about how and why we move, what form that movement takes, and how it shapes our perspective. She grew up dancing from age 3 and synchronized swimming from age 8 to 16, achieving seven national titles. She explores movement in different media:land, air, fluid water, and frozen water by training and teaching dance, flying trapeze, swimming,springboard diving, skiing, and snowboarding. Lundie holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Dartmouth College and an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University. She is a founding member of Abby Z and the New Utility, became Rehearsal Director in 2016, and Company Manager in 2017 as the company has grown. She enjoys supporting this amazing work through these multiple roles from the business side to the collaborative choreographic process to the individual movement investigation. Her performance highlights include Jacob’s Pillow,The American Dance Festival, and the Boston ICA with Abby Z and the New Utility and performing with the STREB Extreme Action Company in NYC’s Fall for Dance Festival.

Jennifer Meckley (she/they) has made it her goal to emphasize the benefits of training in African American vernacular dance techniques and decenter white dance forms in academia as a performer, teacher, choreographer, and practitioner of hip-hop, street dance, club dance, and contemporary dance forms. Her concert dance choreography explores the fusion of movement from breaking, house dance, waacking, vogue, and contemporary dance while attempting to incorporate other live elements such as DJing and graffiti. Moreover, her identity as a gay gender non-conforming person motivates the content for her work. In 2010, Meckley obtained a BA in Dance from Slippery Rock University and an MFA in Dance in 2013 from The Ohio State University. She has served as a faculty member at West Chester University, Cuyahoga Community College, Northampton Community College, and the University of Dayton. Meckley currently serves as anAssistant Professor of Dance at Ball State University and actively pushes the boundaries of physicality through performance as a founding member of Abby Z and the New Utility.