Photo by Scott Shaw
2019:
Bones, Bodies & Demons (10 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Bones, Bodies & Demons is an honest, visceral expression of self through movement, melody, and language. It is a highly scored, full-bodied improvisation that awakens the fire in my belly, the cycles in my brain, and the strength at my fingertips. This intimate solo work asks whether our boundaries confine or liberate us. Does isolation breed self-actualization or self-loathing? Do we create parameters to hold us in or keep others out? Perhaps we’re all just looking for something solid to push against.
Bones, Bodies & Demons was created with support from Gibney, with funds provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation
Bones, Bodies & Demons (10 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Bones, Bodies & Demons is an honest, visceral expression of self through movement, melody, and language. It is a highly scored, full-bodied improvisation that awakens the fire in my belly, the cycles in my brain, and the strength at my fingertips. This intimate solo work asks whether our boundaries confine or liberate us. Does isolation breed self-actualization or self-loathing? Do we create parameters to hold us in or keep others out? Perhaps we’re all just looking for something solid to push against.
Bones, Bodies & Demons was created with support from Gibney, with funds provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation
Photo by Maria Baranova
2018:
LOOP (50 mins)
Interdisciplinary performance by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with Adam Schatz and Emma Judkins
LOOP is a new experiment in collaboration across artistic mediums and sensibilities. It posits performance as an ever-evolving, collaborative means for growth, change, and learning that involves both the audience and performers in its process.
Creators Laurel Snyder, Emma Judkins and Adam Schatz are uncovering new ways of working, using everything from synths, samplers, saxophone, dance and the acoustic voice. They are devising various, cyclical physical and musical scores that invite both known and unknown material to be unearthed live. Each performance is special and unique and you are invited to be a part of it!
This project is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. LOOP was developed with the support of the EtM Choreographer + Composer Residencies in partnership with the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL). Exploring the Metropolis is grateful to the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation for their support of the EtM Choreographer + Composer Residencies in Partnership with the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
LOOP (50 mins)
Interdisciplinary performance by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with Adam Schatz and Emma Judkins
LOOP is a new experiment in collaboration across artistic mediums and sensibilities. It posits performance as an ever-evolving, collaborative means for growth, change, and learning that involves both the audience and performers in its process.
Creators Laurel Snyder, Emma Judkins and Adam Schatz are uncovering new ways of working, using everything from synths, samplers, saxophone, dance and the acoustic voice. They are devising various, cyclical physical and musical scores that invite both known and unknown material to be unearthed live. Each performance is special and unique and you are invited to be a part of it!
This project is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. LOOP was developed with the support of the EtM Choreographer + Composer Residencies in partnership with the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL). Exploring the Metropolis is grateful to the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation for their support of the EtM Choreographer + Composer Residencies in Partnership with the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Photo by Madeline Irmen
2016:
Solosarehardtomake
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Sound Design by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with John Mosloskie
Additional performances by John Mosloskie, Rhys Tivey, Scott VanGenderen and Attis Clopton
Premiered at Center for Performance Research - CPR as a part of Chez Bushwick's 2Night Show program.
solosarehardtomake is an integration investigation. With this process I am creating a personalized embodied songwriting practice that incorporates simultaneous vocal and physical improvisation. This symbiotic relationship between the two inspires each medium to expand beyond its individual creative restraints. I am documenting this process with a sound recorder and I will then edit together these vocal experiments, along with other collected field recordings to create a unique sound score. In performance, I will interact with the recorded sound physically and vocally, exercising and exhibiting the improvisational logic that this process has evoked. Additionally, I will share this sound score with composer, John Mosloskie, to enrich the sound with digital distortion and instruments that will be included in the live performance. As the title of this work expresses, this process is proving to be incredibly challenging, but absolutely necessary for my growth as a dance maker, songwriter, singer, musician, dancer and overall performer.
2015:
we all fall down (10 mins)
Created and Directed by Laurel Snyder
Sound Design by Adam Schatz
Performed by Li Cata, Emma Judkins, Tara Sheena and T.J. Spaur
we all fall down is a continuing exploration in fluidity of self, community and body. Each iteration of this work will feature a different cast of performers with the intention of deepening an improvisational and choreographic practice that is simultaneously ubiquitous and idiosyncratic.Initially inspired by building demolitions and implosions, this work investigates the beauty and science behind destruction that leaves its surroundings seemingly untouched. When translated to the physical architecture of the individual and collective bodies, these structures crumble, but also create space for renewal and regeneration. How do we navigate this cycle of destruction and reconstruction as a society of individuals? How can I find the stability in mobility as a maker? With this space grant I intend to expand on this physical and conceptual research and ultimately devise a new approach to making work that highlights the responsibility of flexibility.
Photo by Danny Carroll
2014:
GRUFF (12 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Sound by Laurel Snyder
GRUFF is a solo dance work that explores full-bodied transformation. This work asks what it means to witness a body go through something, or rather witness something going through a body.
Behaving as an internal exposition, GRUFF physicalizes self-reflection without the aide of facial indication. The performer is publicly confronted with their personal mistakes and is challenged to respond honestly, immediately and extremely. By amplifying, multiplying and willingly presenting imperfection, will the inevitable vulnerability produced, morph into healing and eventually strength?
Performing this work is the research. Each outcome is slightly different and like the Self, GRUFF is a perpetual work in progress.
GRUFF (12 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Sound by Laurel Snyder
GRUFF is a solo dance work that explores full-bodied transformation. This work asks what it means to witness a body go through something, or rather witness something going through a body.
Behaving as an internal exposition, GRUFF physicalizes self-reflection without the aide of facial indication. The performer is publicly confronted with their personal mistakes and is challenged to respond honestly, immediately and extremely. By amplifying, multiplying and willingly presenting imperfection, will the inevitable vulnerability produced, morph into healing and eventually strength?
Performing this work is the research. Each outcome is slightly different and like the Self, GRUFF is a perpetual work in progress.
Photo by Yvonne Portra
2012:
Charlie (5 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Music by Etta James and edited by Corwin Lamm
2011:
maybe you’re just hungry(15 mins)
Created and Directed by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Hannah Darrah and Jacob Slominski
maybe you’re just hungry is a duet between a man and a woman meditating on childlike escapes, specifically in relation to sex, gender and intimacy. Through awkward physical encounters, enacted childhood fantasies, infantile locomotion and unlikely sex and gender explanations we endeavor to draw parallels between our reactions and solutions to problems from childhood as well as adulthood. Maybe our “grown-up” troubles really are simpler than we thought.
Charlie (5 mins)
Created and Performed by Laurel Snyder
Music by Etta James and edited by Corwin Lamm
2011:
maybe you’re just hungry(15 mins)
Created and Directed by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Hannah Darrah and Jacob Slominski
maybe you’re just hungry is a duet between a man and a woman meditating on childlike escapes, specifically in relation to sex, gender and intimacy. Through awkward physical encounters, enacted childhood fantasies, infantile locomotion and unlikely sex and gender explanations we endeavor to draw parallels between our reactions and solutions to problems from childhood as well as adulthood. Maybe our “grown-up” troubles really are simpler than we thought.
Photo by Paul Picasa
2010:
Planning for the Inevitable / like my genes? (11 mins)
Created and Directed by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Hannah Darrah, Perin Hailey McNelis and Regina Sobel
Planning for the Inevitable / like my genes? is a trio for three women. The work investigates the notion that we are an extension of our parents. Whether we like it or not, we wouldn’t be here without them. Working with photographs, habits, mannerisms and stories of our parents at all ages, we literally become them at times while still maintaining our individuality as the performers and people we have become with or without their physical presence in our lives.
Planning for the Inevitable / like my genes? (11 mins)
Created and Directed by Laurel Snyder in collaboration with the performers
Performed by Hannah Darrah, Perin Hailey McNelis and Regina Sobel
Planning for the Inevitable / like my genes? is a trio for three women. The work investigates the notion that we are an extension of our parents. Whether we like it or not, we wouldn’t be here without them. Working with photographs, habits, mannerisms and stories of our parents at all ages, we literally become them at times while still maintaining our individuality as the performers and people we have become with or without their physical presence in our lives.
Photo by Adam Schatz
inside outside outside-in (10 mins)
Choreographed and Performed by Laurel Snyder and Yina Ng
Music by Andrew Maloney
Voice by Adam Schatz
inside outside outside-in is a duet exploring the different body/mind/emotional states of being seen, and how they change due to different external situations and internal shifts of emotions. How do we want to be seen on stage as performers, and how does that conscious or unconscious decision making process apply to/is that affected by the way we are being seen in social settings: on the subway train, in a night club, in an intense eye-to-eye conversation? How do daily social reinforcements affect us as performers and as dancers? Is that change a helpless emotional surrender, a conscious compromise, a fear to be judged, or a desire to impress? This is the process of discovering more about those questions that are important to us as performers and as young artists in their 20s.
Choreographed and Performed by Laurel Snyder and Yina Ng
Music by Andrew Maloney
Voice by Adam Schatz
inside outside outside-in is a duet exploring the different body/mind/emotional states of being seen, and how they change due to different external situations and internal shifts of emotions. How do we want to be seen on stage as performers, and how does that conscious or unconscious decision making process apply to/is that affected by the way we are being seen in social settings: on the subway train, in a night club, in an intense eye-to-eye conversation? How do daily social reinforcements affect us as performers and as dancers? Is that change a helpless emotional surrender, a conscious compromise, a fear to be judged, or a desire to impress? This is the process of discovering more about those questions that are important to us as performers and as young artists in their 20s.
