Daniel Gwirtzman, director, choreographer, dancer as H
Daniel Gwirtzman–producer, director, educator, filmmaker and dancer–celebrates twenty-eight years as a New York choreographer and company director. His diverse repertory has earned praise for its humor, stylistic versatility, musicality, charisma and accessibility. “A flair for the entertaining,” says critic Elizabeth Zimmer. “Mr. Gwirtzman does know that in dance less can be more. And that’s a good thing for any choreographer to know” writes The New York Times. The New Yorker describes him as a choreographer of “high spirits and skill.” For the New York City-based Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, he has created more than one hundred repertory works known for their playful virtuosity, blending robust physicality with universal themes. His choreography has been performed at venues throughout the country and abroad. A master teacher, Gwirtzman has worked at numerous universities including SUNY Buffalo State, Kennesaw State University, and The University of the Arts. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ithaca College’s newly inaugurated School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. Daniel holds degrees from The University of Michigan and The University of Wisconsin. He danced in the companies of Garth Fagan Dance and the Mark Morris Dance Group among others. He co-founded Artichoke Dance Company in 1995, which The New York Times called “a welcome addition to the New York dance scene.” As a dancer he has been described as “a willowy John Travolta, sensual, playful, a rag doll, unusually supple, and one who moves like the wind.” Daniel has served on the National Dance Education Organizaton’s Board as the Director of E-Communication from 2017-2019 and currently serves as a Policy Board member, since 2020.
Saviana Stanescu, playwright
SAVIANA STANESCU is a cutting-edge award-winning Romanian playwright, poet, and ARTivist based in NY, author of Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, For a Barbarian Woman, Don’t / Dream, Bee Trapped Inside the Window, Zebra 2.0, LAB RATS, What Happens Next, Ants, Lenin’s Shoe, Hurt, Useless, Toys, and many other plays centering the immigrant experience. Winner of New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Play (Waxing West) and UNITER Award for Best Romanian Play of the Year (Inflatable Apocalypse), Saviana has published over 20 books of plays and poetry, written in English and Romanian, translated and produced around the world. Other honors: Fulbright, Indie Theatre Hall of Fame, John Golden Award, KulturKontakt, Marulic Prize for Best European Radiodrama, Inaugural Audrey Residency with New Georges, etc.
Saviana’s US plays have been developed/produced off-Broadway at Women’s Project, La MaMa, 59E59, NYTW, EST, HERE, New Georges, The New Group, Lark; regionally at the Hangar Theatre, Cherry Artspace, Civic Ensemble, HartBeat Ensemble, Know Theatre, B Street Theatre, Traveling Jewish Theatre; and globally at Teatro La Capilla in Mexico City, Teatrul Odeon in Bucharest, Dramalabbet in Stockholm, etc. She was a writer-in-residence for Richard Schechner’s East Coast Artists in New York and for the National Museum of Literature in Bucharest.
Ms Stanescu holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing and an MA in Performance Studies from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and currently works as an Associate Professor of Playwriting and Contemporary Theatre at Ithaca College. She has published over 20 books of drama and poetry, written in English or Romanian.
Saviana is the founding artistic director of Immigrant Artists and Scholars in New York (IASNY), and curates/hosts the recurring IASNY programs: Liberty’s Daughters – Immigrant Women’s Monologues, New York with an Accent, and Global Poetry Series (GPS). www.saviana.com, www.savianastanescu.com
Sarah Hillmon, dancer as Ava
Sarah Hillmon was born and raised in Rochester, NY. There she trained with Garth Fagan, Timothy M. Draper, and was a member of the Rochester City Ballet. She graduated with a BFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she had the privilege of performing works by talented artists including Sidra Bell, Lucinda Childs, Gus Solomons Jr, and Charles Weidman. After college, Sarah became a member of Lucinda Childs Dance Company, where she toured the world performing classic works. While in New York City, Sarah has also had the honor to perform with artists such as Solange Knowles, as well as a number of dance companies including Robert Mark Dance, Suzanne Beahrs Dance, BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance, AMS Project, MATYCHAK, DanceBoissiere, and the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company.
Jeff Story, music
e-Motion is dedicated to the memory of composer Jeff Story (1966-2022). Jeff’s collaboration with DGDC spanned twenty-one years, resulting in scores of compositions for the Company’s repertory. All the music heard in e-Motion’s score is Jeff’s, pulled from various dances, including some music that was in his archives and has never been heard before. Read more in memoriam.
So-Yeon Yoon, data capture and projection design
So-Yeon Yoon is an associate professor of Design and Environmental Analysis and the director of Design-User Experience-Technology (DUET) Research Lab at the College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. She is currently the president of the Design Communication Association.
She practiced interior design and architecture in Korea and the U.S. With her education and industry experience in design with digital media, she taught the School of Design at the University of Ulsan in Korea and worked with industry partners on large-scale interface/interaction design projects.
Ashley Crespo, lighting design
Ashley Crespo is an Ithaca College Student studying Theatre Production and Design. She is a lighting designer and a lighting technician. She has lighting designed Caesar at Ithaca College, Ithaca College on Broadway at The Marriott Marquis and Heading into Night at the Cherry Arts.
Elizabeth Mozer, voice of Ava
Elizabeth Mozer is an actress, theatre maker, director, and educator, with a specialization in movement. She is currently developing a new work entitled Natural Causes based on the lives of environmental activists. Elizabeth recently wrote and directed Castle on the Hill, a play drawn from the lives of patients of the Binghamton State Hospital. Elizabeth’s performance of her one-woman play The Asylum Project received the award for BEST DRAMA at the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC. Elizabeth has been an original cast member in the Broadway productions Teddy & Alice, Dangerous Games and Victor/Victoria. As a member of the Cherry Artists’ Collective, her performances include And What Happens If I Don’t, Listen to Her – a mini festival, George Kaplan, and Felt Sad, Posted A Frog. Elizabeth is an Associate Professor at Binghamton University and a member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA.
Angela Lopes, stage manager
Angela Lopes, (she/they) is a bicoastal stage manager based mostly in California and New York. Some of her professional credits include Production Stage Managing The Nutcracker (Agape Dance Academy), Nabucco (Opera Ithaca), Candide (Cabrillo Stage), Befana: A Christmas Fable (Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra), Orpheus in The Underworld (Opera Ithaca and Raylynmor Opera), Cinderella (CYT Santa Cruz) and Assistant Stage Managing Red Riding Hood (Hangar Theatre) and No Child… (Kitchen Theatre Company). She is thrilled to be making her stage management debut at The Cherry and hopes you enjoy the show!
Karen Rodriguez, livestream video
Karen Rodriguez is an Ithaca based filmmaker and cinematographer. She is the owner of Wind-Up Pictures and the director of photography of the documentary Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing. She has designed the live-stream for the hybrid productions at The CHerry since 2021 including, And What Happens If I Don’t by Iva Brda, The Wetsuitman by Freek Mariën, Aqueron with the Xipe Theatre Collective, and Heading into Night by Daniel Passer and Beth F. Miles. Karen is a Fulbright Scholar (2017) and holds an MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa Graduate College. She is delighted to bring live theatre to distant audiences through live stream!
Greg Levins, livestream video
Greg Levins graduated NYU with an emphasis in film directing, screenplay writing and video editing. Greg worked for a handful of casting houses in NYC, auditioning actors in countless commercials, industrials, music videos and films. He’s directed two indie features, wrote a handful of screenplays and dabbled in music video and commercial production. Since moving to Ithaca he’s made a number of promotional videos for Ecovillage, filmed a weekly Gayogohó:nǫ’ language class taught by one of the few remaining native speakers for several years, along with working for the Cherry Arts in numerous productions over the last two seasons. He’s thrilled to be a part of e-Motion, helping to expand the audience to include viewers at home with a live stream feed.
Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company
The nonprofit has been committed to education since its inception in 1998, operating with the philosophy that everyone can join the dance through multigenerational interactive programming. Incorporating dance and story into the film medium has been a consistent practice along with creating original programming for the stage. Collaborations that erode boundaries, blend genres and disciplines, take chances, involve community, promote accessibility, and celebrate performers’ individuality and humanity are areas of focus. Highlights include performances at Jacob’s Pillow, The Kennedy Center, Battery Dance Festival, Fire Island Dance Festival, Bryant Park, La MaMa, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Company has been awarded commissions and residencies from institutions including the Joyce Theater Foundation, The Yard, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Raumars (Finland), Sacatar Foundation (Brazil), Sfakiotes Residency (Greece) Maison Dora Maar (France), Centro Negra (Spain), Gdański Festiwal Tanca (Poland), The Studios of Key West, CUNY Kinsgborough Community College, and Ucross (Wyoming), among many others. This June, the Company’s film Charged screens at the American Dance Fesitval in Durham, NC and in July, Lincoln Center and the New York Public Library’s Performing Arts branch present DGDC in a standalone event. Visit gwirtzmandance.org to learn more. The Company’s acclaimed recent creation, Dance With Us, an online educational resource designed to demystify concert dance, showcases the Company’s decade-long practice working in the dance for camera genre. https://dancewithus.org
note from the director/choreographer
A fascination with AI and technology has been present since founding the Company twenty-five years ago. I recently went through the Company’s archives to find a letter written to the press in the summer of 1999 when Plasma Field, the Company’s first evening-length dance, premiered at the Merce Cunningham Studio. In it I wrote:
As a species, we have evolved so fully, we have come so far. By our own definition we separate ourselves from the animal world; we are humans. But we are animals, with exquisite awareness and brainpower. We continue to become “smarter.” Our brains have evolved so well that we drive technology forward, constantly harnessing our environment, leaving as little as possible to chance and the natural order of things. We consume ourselves with endless minutiae and distractions. Our brains become more compartmentalized, organized, filofax-like, dense. We are becoming computers.
What of our continual departure from, and abuse of, the natural world? We know we cannot continue to operate so avariciously without repercussions. What reason is there to believe that reason or moral rightness will play into our future’s equation? Is it too late to stop the avalanche of more, faster, better? The disappearances and deformities of frogs. Uncanny natural conditions and disasters. These are not accidents. Every contribution we make tips the scales of balance. We are affecting our world; it is only a matter of time before the world’s effects are truly felt. Overpopulation, increasing disparities of wealth, isolated, self-serving interests, war …
Looking back through time, it is inconceivable to consider a thousand years hence that as a species, if still around, we will be recognizable. We may become a sedentary species. There may be no need in the future for us to have legs, for us to locomote. As each generation spends more time in front of a computer, we may evolve to mere stumps, able to function fully with our brains, and our keypads. Is this really so farfetched? Legs may become vestiges. If we stop needing them and using them, will we evolve to not have them? What hubris would allow us to think otherwise? That after millions of years, we would stop evolving? Why would we? We will not. Our technology will shape our evolution, as our environment has always done, to every species. We are creating the reality we have envisioned; our dreams of the future inform our present, propelling us closer to the Blade Runner fantasies we have harbored for decades. It can only be this way. We make the reality we desire. What will be the ultimate effects of our hyper-technological quests? And what has been lost along the way?
These musings strike me as relevant today as they did when I wrote them in 1999. On the cusp of this tipping point, when there is so much uncertainty about the harm of this exponential acceleration of AI, along with the benefits…we don’t know. Really all we do know now is that we don’t know so much of how this technology could be applied, distorted, the effects of the powers we have unleashed.
It is precisely being a dancer in a technologically-driven era that informs each day with meaning, satisfaction, joy, and gratitude, an analog antidote to the digital reality of screens, keyboards, cables, and data. Tuning out the world by tuning into one’s body is an escape into the natural world, connecting bodily and cellularly to the evolution of our species over eons. As a physical being in this artificial world (granted, much of the artifice is composed from natural elements) I am reminded daily of the purpose of the body’s physicality and intellectual possibilities through the practice of dance. Using the dancer as a metaphor for an AI being, and dance as a whole as a metaphor for AI, as we do in e-Motion, is apt. For their shared complexities, infinite and often unknowable possibilities, computing processing and speed, harnessing of the physical with the intellectual, and, at some point, the undefinable magic that occurs, the emergent concepts and themes and moments of beautiful surprise that take place.
The humanity side of this larger story–what it is to live with AI, which is about to invade and pervade every aspect of our lives–is the tale we have developed. We have worked to avoid a didactic lecture or essay, but to use the framework of neuroscience upon which to create flesh and blood, or flesh and blood and circuitry. It’s this aspect of AI, the quest to achieve true AI sentience, which has motivated our creative work, understanding the potential applications for interactions between humans and robots in terms of their companionship, service and entertainment. e-Motion is presenting these ethical questions as commerce drives the race forward. This dance is completely of our time, of this moment in time when all that we have known could be at stake.
Daniel Gwirtzman
note from the playwright
As a former journalist who fought in the streets at the Romanian Revolution against the dictatorial regime of Ceaușescu, I’ve always been concerned with ethical questions about power dynamics, freedom of expression, and social/political rights for the underdogs.
Recent advancements in neuroscience and generative AI have made me obsess over the ethical aspects of the interaction between humans and (AI) machines. I’ve been trying to write dramatic texts that address these issues and make people aware of the wide range of implications regarding human-AI connectivity and relationships. Of course, many people are doing the same thing in other fields.
The process of working on e-Motion with Daniel Gwirtzman has been unique because it’s led to the creation of a dance theatre piece, a hybrid that lives at the intersection of dance, theatre, visual installations, human-centered design, neuroscience, and computer science. When we started talking about this project, ChatGPT was not something we had access to. The research I was doing at that time was mostly connected to the neuroscience of emotions (a neuroscientist boyfriend had introduced me to this fascinating field).
When ChatGPT became accessible, I started –– like many others –– to chat every day with this OpenAI product invented by an Eastern-European immigrant like myself, Andrej Karpathy. I asked ChatGPT many questions connected to the story Daniel and I had conceived for e-Motion, and I had the AI generate hundreds of pages that gave us insights into how this language model “thinks” and creates text.
For a while I was paralyzed and couldn’t write anything myself –– ChatGPT was able to generate so much text, then what’s my role as a playwright now? But after observing the dance sequences that Daniel choreographed, watching Daniel and Sarah beautifully embodying the story ideas, and seeing the amazing human bodies in motion, in e-motion, my human creativity kicked in again. After all, ChatGPT was repeating itself, offering dull phrases. I could bring my unique brand of humor and irony to the story; I could write playful dialogues and insightful monologues reflecting my own poetic/dramatic writing style and connecting to the abstract movement Daniel imagined.
I had to work hard on distilling the lines to their essence because this show is not a play, it’s a piece that incorporates dance (as the main element), digital projections, music, spoken word, coding language, AI dramaturgies, and playwriting –– so each artistic medium needs to collaborate in telling the story without distracting the audience. Additionally, there’s an interactive part in which the spectators can ‘discuss’ with ChatGPT directly. One could say that ChatGPT might be an actor in our show, or a researcher who supported us, but I wouldn’t call it a playwright, and definitely not a dancer 🙂
The Renaissance was one of the times that brought humanity to the next level of creativity, and I feel that we are living in a similar yet enhanced/augmented era. Some people call me a Renaissance woman, but I think that I’m becoming an ‘enhanced’ one, Saviana 2.0, a creator who finally incorporates her live experience, her degrees/knowledge of performing arts, theatre, literature, journalism, and even my old B.S. in Computer Science (that I was completing when the Romanian Revolution started), in order to bring something meaningful to humanity.
I recognize in my collaborator, Daniel Gwirtzman, a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler, in search of similar answers and questions. Come see our “Creature”: the dance theatre show, e-Motion.
Saviana Stanescu