May 5, 2006
Dance New Amsterdam

August 18 - 30, 2004
Metro Gilded Balloon
Edinburgh Festival Fringe

April 15, 2003
Joyce SoHo

April 8, 2003
Unusual Beauty Contestants Tour

June 15, 2002
HERE Arts Center

May 13, 2002
Dixon Place

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 15, 2002

Contact: Dixie FunLee Shulman
100 W. 57th Street #4A
New York, NY 10019
917.693.7299

Dixie Fun Dance Theatre performs http://www.media-verse.com at HERE Arts Center as part of The American Living Room Series

Dixie Fun Dance Theatre creates dances that are reminiscent of pop art, political cartoons and expressionist painting all combined and expressed physically. http://www.media-verse.com is a humorous dance exploring how mass media and technology are changing our sense of culture, community and democracy.

The details:

HERE Arts Center presents:
http://www.media-verse.com
Created and performed by
Dixie Fun Dance Theatre
Saturday and Sunday, July 13 and 14 at 8:30pm
HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue (one block below Spring Street) in SoHo
Contact HERE by phone at (212) 647-0202 or by visiting www.here.org
Tickets are $15

For more info, photos or interview requests,
call Dixie FunLee Shulman at (917) 693-7299

HERE Arts Center, in association with Lincoln Center Theater, Presents the 13th Annual

The American Living Room festival (TALR)
More than 100 new works featuring over 1000 Artists in seven weeks at the hippest, edgiest and oldest New York City performance festival in HERE's fully air-conditioned arts complex

http://www.media-verse.com consists of many short segments that abruptly shift from one to the next, much like watching television. Commercials are even included. The title of the dance is a play on the word "universe," suggesting that we more accurately live in a "media-verse." The performance begins with a campy, surreal dance version of TV news. Later the dancers are contained in black rod-iron squares humorously and frantically cleaning, shaving, eating, smoking, lying down, breaking down, getting down, washing up and calling up. Local artist Pavel Zustiak mixes subway and internet sounds with tribal rhythms for a soundscore that accompanies an exploration of the social phenomenon of public spaces. The movement in this section ranges from wild, driving, "dancey" movement to contact improvisation to more literal, theatrical gestures. The piece ends with an intense, action-packed movement sequence performed to the words of Noam Chomsky.

Dixie Fun Dance Theatre creates dance/theatre pieces that are both humorous and socially and politically inspired, kind of like a dance version of George Carlin or Dennis Miller. Dixie FunLee Shulman recently premiered her one-woman show, The Thinnest Woman Wins, at Dixon Place and Sal Anthony's Movement Salon. Shulman's solo "Twirl" was presented this year by Dance Theater Workshop at Flea Theater and by BRIC Studio in Brooklyn. In 2001 she presented Web, the company's first full evening of dance/theatre in NYC at the Merce Cunningham Studio. This evening included an excerpt of http://www.media-verse, which was also seen at the Frederick Loewe Theatre and was originally created in 1996 with a grant from the Seattle Arts Commission. The Puffin Foundation is helping to support the remounting of full evening spectacle, The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins, in 2003. This production was originally created in Seattle in 1997 and 1999 at On The Boards with the support of the King County Hotel/Motel Tax. In 1998, "Twirl" toured Washington state with the King County Performance Network, a collaboration between King County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts and eleven local venues. Dixie graduated summa cum laude with an M.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
dixiefun@nyc.rr.com

Since opening in 1993, HERE Arts Center has housed New York's most daring and unique theater, art, music and dance in its three theaters, two galleries and cafe. Previous works orginally produced at HERE include Eve Ensler's THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, Basil Twist's SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, the inaugural production of The Dream Music Puppetry Program, Camryn Manheim's WAKE UP! I'M FAT, and original musical and dance works created and directed by Kristin Marting.

HERE Arts Center supports the work of artists at all stages in their careers through fully-produced works, commissions and subsidized performance and rehearsal space. In addition, HERE's staff provides marketing, technical and administrative consultation and support. All work at HERE is curated based on the strength and uniqueness of the artist's vision.