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phase(un) fazed: An Interview With Natalie Deryn Johnson

April 15, 2023

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Jody Christopherson

Curated From newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com Check Them Out For More Content.

The So-fi Festival proudly presents Natalie Deryn Johnson’s phase (un)fazed with music by Rhys Tivey, at Westbeth, Home to the Arts (463 West Street, Room 1209, between Bethune and Bank St) June 14thth & June 15th @ 7pm.

So-fi is a festival for cutting edge, low-fi, high concept, multidisciplinary solo work. Westbeth is New York City landmark listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places since Dec 8, 2009, a home to artists and major cultural organizations including the New School for Drama, The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, the School for Poetic Computation. The location where phase (un)fazed will be performed was the location of Bell Labs’ Boardroom where the first talking movie, the condenser microphone, the first TV broadcast, and the first binary computer were demonstrated.

In phase (un)fazed one
girl dances and talks her way through cosmic metaphors of black holes, atomic
romance, and the physics of falling in search of answers on compatibility,
compassion, and integrity of self.

What
do Stephen Hawkings and tuning forks have to do with Natalie’s love life? Natalie
has long wished to be a Steinway, reads quantum physics like a love story and
is now in search for the frequency of personal alignment. In a desire to
explore resonance, compatibility, and integrity of being, Natalie turns to her
dancing body and voice. She weaves whimsical and radical correlations between
poetic phenomena and human connection while moving in and out of lushness. At
times her body and voice speak in tandem (metadance). At times her voice is
only heard in recording, featured and then nearly swallowed in the atmosphere
of exhales, musings and melodic murmurs of a sound score composed by Rhys
Tivey.

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phase (un)fazed plays in rep with The Coldharts The Legend of White Woman Creek 6/13 and 6/15.

Tickets are currently on sale and will be $25 per single ticket, $36 per two-show double bill ticket. (Please note that Westbeth is handicap accessible with ramps and elevators.) Nearest trains to Westbeth are (1,2,3 to 14^th Street). Tickets can be purchased at https://www.so-fi-festival.com/, (888) 692-7878, or in person at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain (463 West Street, Room 1209, between Bethune and Bank St). Full performance line-up listed below. For more info and a full festival calendar please visit: https://www.so-fi-festival.com/

Tell us about your show? In your own words, what is it/ what is it/what is it about?

A dancing and talking body poetically navigates personal narrative and intimacy through a web of quantum physics and meta physics. The show is about phase changes, playful science and the contemplation of integrity.

What multidisciplinary elements does it include and how are they used? How are they unique?

I dance and talk, often at the same time. The movement has evolved out of personal practice and choreographic study. It now exists as an intuitive gesture language that pairs with my speech and allows dialogue between body and voice.

At times the voice gives impulse to physicality and sometimes the physicality comments on the spoken word. The playfulness between the two allows for rhythm, impulse and a range of energies to partake in the moment. I’m not trying to specifically present dance or linear storytelling and these disciplines together allow for a poetic embodied reality. Sound is utilized as a means to arc and measure time during improvisation and allow exterior forces to bully me forward. It also offers nostalgia and lifts the tone of the room into a whimsical belief state.

Why do you make theater? Can you talk about the medium and what it lends to your work?

I create theater as a means to bridge gaps and spark both enchantment and perspective.

This medium of storytelling allows me to offer fuller presence and imagery to the audience. My practice has always centered on vulnerability, compassion and permission giving. It’s almost like channeling, despite the improvisational roots. I go into performance with words and questions and trust my body and voice to basically hash it out in real time. There is a structure or vocabulary at play, but I make theater as a way to vulnerably dance, literally, with philosophical, grief and celebration oriented energies. Within the performance context, I can weave poetry, dance, concepts of memoir or confession with an appreciation for magical realism. I turn to performance as a means to make transparent the invisible and create intimacy.

Ultimately, it’s a creative conversation container that allows me to express values of compassion and reflection.

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NATALIE DERYN JOHNSON is
an improvisational movement artist, poet, photographer based in New York City.
In 2018 she was chosen to partake in the Once Upon Water Residency in Toronto
and was in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts for her solo work.
Patient History, a story exploring chronic illness and elevation, premiered at
Mister Rogers as her first movement memoire. She has worked with famed dance
photographer Lois Greenfield and regularly performs with Christina Noel and the
Creature. Her work with Albert A. Garcia premiered at BAM, Dixon Place and
Bowery Poetry Club. She holds a Scholastic National Gold Key in Photography and
received her BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from UC Irvine. She
dances in the rain and can be found collaborating with a variety of artists in
a variety of contexts, from galleries to basements, from stage to film.

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