Head Hi x Beach Sessions present:
Screening of
Merce Cunningham’s Beach Birds, A New Arrangement for Beach Sessions 2023
Filmed by Alex Munro
Monday, April 29, 2024, 6:30 pm
Head Hi, 146 Flushing Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
Join us for a special screening of Beach Birds, A New Arrangement for Beach Sessions 2023, a performance of one of Merce Cunningham’s iconic choreographic works filmed by Alex Munro. Originally created in 1991 for an indoor stage setting, this new adaptation of Beach Birds, commissioned and produced by Beach Sessions, was performed by 11 dancers last summer on the shoreline at Rockaway Beach, New York.
Ticket Details:
Entry ticket for all RSVPs is $10.
There are no physical tickets, please RSVP here and choose
'Pick up at the shop' for the shipping option.
The setting for the screening will be a first come first served mix of seated and standing areas. If you require any additional accessibility accomodations, please email us at hello@headhi.net after you RSVP here.
Photo by Maria Baranova.
The 2023 presentation of Beach Birds at Beach Sessions was made possible with lead support from 7G Group with major funding provided by The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and The Merce Cunningham Trust, and additional support from the Jamaica Bay - Rockaway Parks Conservancy and Saks Fifth Avenue. This arrangement of Merce Cunningham’s Beach Birds (1991) was developed in part during an artist residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.
More About Beach Sessions:
Since 2015, Beach Sessions has built a reputation for bringing New York audiences non-traditional and multi-sensory live performance programming. Each summer invited artists have the opportunity to present site-specific work on the shorelines of the beach with the ocean as their backdrop. The programming footprint spans twenty blocks, from Beach 86th to Beach 106th, and is free to the public. A popular destination, this area of the beach is dense with locals and daily beach goers. The series has introduced the Rockaways as a promising place for artmaking and cultural events.Over the past nine editions, the series has offered a unique venue for New York choreographers like no other anywhere in the city. The site has enabled them, and challenged them, to think of their practice and processes through different lenses than would be required by a proscenium stage. Beach Sessions has presented more than 80 established to emerging choreographers to an audience of more than 10,000 people.
Alex Munro:
Alex Munro is a director and cinematographer who works with visual and performing artists to create film work and document performances. He works with a number of major NY based art institutions such as MoMA, The Whitney, Pace Gallery, Hauser & Wirth and many others.
Merce Cunningham Trust:
The Merce Cunningham Trust, established in 2000, preserves, enhances, and maintains the integrity of Cunningham’s artistic work and processes, and makes his works available to the public. The Trust looks toward a vital future, facilitating access to and experience of Cunningham’s work, training dancers in his technique, providing stagers with vital resources to develop their craft, supporting the development of audiences for his work, and fostering creativity connected to Cunningham's legacy.
Head Hi:
Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events.