The Flute on its Feet, a duo comprised of New York City based flutist/dancer Zara Lawler and dancer/choreographer C. Neil Parsons offer a performance/workshop at DANY (Dance Art New York), Studio 4/W on Sunday, June 16, 2013 from 3:30 – 5pm. Tickets are $25 (cash or check at the door), and reservations are required by emailing [email protected]. DANY is located at 305 West 38th Street, New York, NY. For more information, call 212-564-3808.

Intended participants are flutists and other instrumentalists of all ages interested in exploring or adding movement and theater to music performance.

The Flute on its Feet is a virtuoso tour de force that includes classics of the flute repertoire, new works by American composers, and pieces choreographed for flutist/dancer Zara Lawler by innovative choreographer C. Neil Parsons. The Flute on its Feet offers audiences a new and truly unique experience within the world of classical music: instrumental performance of the highest quality fully integrated with dance, theater and storytelling.

In this workshop, Lawler and Parsons introduce participants to the basic principles of interdisciplinary performance, and demonstrate how to collaboratively create a mini-performance piece. They will cover both creating new works from the ground up as well as re-interpreting existing works to include extra-musical elements. The final collaboration will include participant-created elements, as well as a haiku by Matsuo Basho and a small section from Edie Hill’s This Floating World for solo flute.

COMPLETE PROGRAM:

Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961), Eight Pieces (1997), choreography by C. Neil Parsons

Edie Hill (b. 1962), This Floating World (2004/2006). staged by Zara Lawler with texts by Basho

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), Fantasies, choreography by C. Neil Parsons

Ground-breaking flutist Zara Lawler, “an engaging, fluent, mellifluous soloist,” (Houston Chronicle) made her concerto debut with the Houston Symphony and her recital debut at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. A recognized leader in the emerging field of interdisciplinary performance, Lawler has collaborated with choreographers, composers and stage directors to create new and adventurous concert experiences. Recently, Lawler directed a site-specific performance for 104 flutists of Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Il Cerchio Tagliato Dei Suoni” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and appeared in family performances for the New York Philharmonic and for the Kennedy Center.

Lawler’s interdisciplinary performances, in which she plays, dances and acts, have been created in collaboration with choreographer C. Neil Parsons, stage director Gary Race, and composers Randall Woolf, Jerome Kitzke, and Alla Borzova among others. For many years, Lawler was the flutist and Co-Artistic Director of Tales & Scales, the innovative ensemble for children and family audiences. With T&S, she performed and co-created seven full-length works that integrated contemporary classical music with dance and theater, an experience described by New Music Connoisseur as “an enthrallingly visual and acoustic joy.” Lawler performed with T&S in some of the most prestigious venues in the country, including the Kennedy Center, the Kravis Center, TriBeca Performing Arts Center, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center and with the Atlanta, Utah, Indianapolis, and Oregon Symphonies, and the Buffalo Philharmonic.

Lawler has given solo recitals in New York, Santa Barbara, Hong Kong, and throughout the US, and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Houston Symphony and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Lawler spent two summers at the Marlboro School of Music, and has been a guest artist with eighth blackbird. Her critically acclaimed duo with marimbist Paul J. Fadoul (Lawler & Fadoul) is frequently heard in Washington, DC and New York City, and last year was in residence at Yellow Barn in Vermont.

Zara Lawler has created a new genre of performance that defies definition. Dance and story create new entry points into the music for the uninitiated; for the experienced concertgoer, they intend to illuminate the music in a profound and moving way. At once groundbreaking and inviting to new audiences, Lawler offers a new performance standard for the 21st century.

Collaborative performance artist C. Neil Parsons has been pioneering interdisciplinary performance practices for over 15 years. While studying trombone performance at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he designed an individual major (Interdisciplinary Performance & Education) to unite his interests in music, dance, theatre, and teaching. Since then, Neil has made a specialty of choreographing and directing musicians in interdisciplinary works, most notably with flutist Zara Lawler, *Asterisk, and The Fourth Wall. Neil currently resides in Bloomington, IN, where he is actively involved with several arts organizations, including the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Windfall Dancers, and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra.