NOVEL FORMATS ON-SITE: Performance works and Installation art: A project by Rachel Bernsen and Collaborators: Megan Craig, Chico Eastridge, JAM – Junction Arts & Media, Noah Mease, and Jean Carla Rodea

Clifford B. West Gallery and Rebecca Lawrence Gallery | Scheduled performances:  1/23, 1/24, 2/6, 2/7. Receptions start at 6:30 PM, performances begin at 7 PM, $25 per person | click here to purchase tickets

Performance Overview | In life, as in performance, we think that our senses are instinctual and real, but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, immediacy, risk, and real-time human connection. Novel Formats is a cycle of seven performance works that explore the phenomenal nature of dance in conversation with forms outside itself. Each dance is unique, and each work in Novel Formats is a distinct collaboration between dance, music, and visual art. For each, artists come together from a range of practices and, in varying permutations, engage collectively in performance making. In doing so, they investigate the social and political dimensions of improvisation. The works demonstrate that improvisation can be a shared experience that transcends discipline: it is a communal practice, a way to be in relationship with oneself, with others, and the world.  To date, three works in the Novel Formats cycle have been created and performed: #1: A Dialogue, #2: The Set Up, #3: Loop. The Gallery will be premiering performances of the next two works: #5: For A Time, #6: You Are Here, Change, Change, Change. This presentation of Novel Formats On-Site expands the project beyond the ephemeral to include material visual art in the shared space of the gallery. Each artist in the exhibit is a Novel Formats collaborator. Each moves fluidly between disciplines, their work rooted in experimentation with form and the mutuality of solo and collective practice. Collectively, these artists are performers, designers, theater artists, sculptors, scholars, filmmakers, musicians, and creators of immersive, dynamic installation works.

Rachel Bernsen | Biography: Rachel Bernsen (Born 1970, Minneapolis, MN) is a dancer, choreographer, and movement educator whose work reflects an ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary practice, collaboration, and experimentation. Outside of her own projects, she frequently collaborates and performs with musicians including cellist and composer Tomeka Reid, saxophonist Caroline Davis, violist and electronics artist Mac Waters, and cornetist and multi-instrumentalist Taylor Ho Bynum. She performed with Yvonne Rainer and Emily Coates at Performa 19 (2019), in a reconstruction of Rainer’s Parts of Some Sextets (PoSS, a seminal work from 1965). In 2018, she made a piece with ten healthcare workers and caregivers, I Know You So Well, A Sound and Movement Choir for People Who Work in Healthcare, a multi-disciplinary work of movement, text, and voice, in collaboration with writer Rachel Kauder Nalebuff. Rachel is a founding member of Masters of Ceremony (2011-2020), an interdisciplinary collective with dancer/choreographer Melanie Maar and composer/performers Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. She’s created multiple performance works with visual artist Megan Craig, including Traveling In Place (2017) for The Yale University Art Gallery and Colorada (2015) for Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Neuenhaus, Germany. She has worked with composer Anthony Braxton on multiple projects, including as choreographer for his Sonic Genome Project (Torino Jazz Festival, Torino, Italy), as choreographer and performer for his opera Trillium J (Roulette, NYC), and as a performer in his interdisciplinary Pine Top Aerial Music project. Other collaborative works with musicians and composers include vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, bagpipe player Matthew Welch, and numerous projects with bassist and electronics artist Carl Testa and vocalist Anne Rhodes. Bernsen has been a choreographer/movement director for theatre, including Rachel Kauder Nalebuff’s A Knock on the Door for the Reimagine Festival (Riverside Church), A Christmas Carol, adapted and directed by Carol Dunne at Northern Stage, and NOISE, A Musical by César Alvarez and directed by Sarah Benson. Rachel’s work has been presented locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, and her work has been supported by grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, A Connecticut Artist Fellowship, and a VT Development Grant. She has received residences at Djerassi, Montalvo, and as a Fresh Tracks Artist-in-residence at what is now New York Live Arts. She also teaches dance and the Alexander Technique. rachelbernsen.com, @rachelbernsen Artist Statement | My primary discipline is dance. For many years, I have been working as a multidisciplinary artist participating, instigating, and directing collaborative environments and creating works that exist at the intersection of dance, music, and visual art. My choreographies are minimal structures, providing the basis for experimentation. Working with composers in black creative music has deeply informed my understanding of the relationship between freedom and form. My performance practice mines that tension as part of an ongoing investigation of the social and political dimensions of improvisation as a shared experience. For me, improvisation is a communal, cross-disciplinary practice: a way to be in relationship with oneself, with others, and the world. I am increasingly interested in experiences that embrace the fluidity of such interrelations and their real-time possibilities for communion, transcendence, and even failure.

Megan Craig | Biography: Megan Craig is an artist, essayist, and Associate Professor of philosophy and art at Stony Brook University, where she directs the MA in Philosophy with a Concentration in the Arts. Craig has exhibited work nationally and internationally and has been awarded painting residencies and grants from several institutions, including the Pollack Krasner Foundation, The Weir Farm Trust, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Arts Foundation. At Stony Brook University, she teaches courses in aesthetics, ethics, French phenomenology, and American philosophy, with research focused on synesthesia, autism, color and color perception, embodiment, memory, and touch. Her most recent book, co-authored with Edward S. Casey is Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion (Columbia University Press, 2025). Craig is also the graphic designer for Firehouse 12 in New Haven, CT. @waterstreetprojects. www.megancraig.com

Chico Eastridge | Biography: Mostly water. Artist Statement: A cavalcade of conflicting and poorly thought-out ideas resulting from a lack of focus and panic.

Noah Mease | Biography: Noah Mease is an artist making objects, comics, and performance. He is a student in his final year at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and works and teaches at rePlay Arts, the Upper Valley’s creative reuse art store and community crafting space. His improvised, daily webcomic is free to read at, namelessmage.com. Noah is a playwright and theater-maker with productions in New York City (Gym at Judson, Ars Nova, New Light Theater Project, JACK), and an OBIE Award-winning designer working on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in experimental spaces throughout NYC and around the world, specializing in objects, props, and details. He’s also designed sets and installations for immersive experiences, dance, film, and television. Originally from Williston, Vermont, Noah makes art, life, and a home in White River Junction.

Jean Carla Rodea | Biography: Jean Carla Rodea (b in Mexico City) is a research-based interdisciplinary artist and educator. Their work involves a variety of disciplines and media such as music, sound, vocal performance, poetry, performance art, photography, video, movement, and sculpture. Her artistic practice deals with spaces and instances where problematic socio-political and cultural constructs are rendered visible through multimedia installations and performances. As a musician and improviser, Jean Carla is dedicated to performing and composing various music/sound in diverse settings–from solo to large ensembles. She/they have performed and recorded with William Parker, Darius Jones’ vocal quartet Elizabeth-Caroline Unit, Gerald Cleaver’s Uncle June, Anthony Braxton’s Syntactical Ghost Trance Music Choir, and Cecilia Lopez’s Machinic Fantasies. In addition to this, she/they lead their multi-media projects: Buscando a Marina/Looking for Marina, and Nine Easy Steps Toward Oblivion. Jean Carla has worked and collaborated with Asiya Wadud, Jo Wood Brown, Rachel Bernsen, Leyya Mona Tawil, Art Jones, Kyle Bruckmann, Joe Morris, Matt Mottel, etc. Rodea was a 2023 Issue Project Room AIR. She has performed extensively and shown work at Roulette Intermedium, Carnegie Hall, BRIC, Knockdown Center, Judson Church, Danspace, Center for Performance Research, Panoply Lab, The Clemente, FiveMyles, mh PROJECT nyc, to mention a few.  Artist statement: Jean Carla Rodea is an interdisciplinary artist with a research-based practice, originally from Mexico City and currently based between San Francisco, CA, and Brooklyn, NY. Their work spans music, sound, vocality, performance, poetry, photography, video, and sculpture, moving fluidly between solo projects and collaborative, cross-disciplinary environments. They draw from shifting identities, immigration, ritual, performance, ecology, construction work, and improvisation, engaging deeply with time-based media and the diverse spaces where these interactions take place. A central focus of their practice is the exploration of critical socio-political issues, including the politics of the body, gender, memory, and imbalanced human relationships. They are particularly invested in how time is constructed through memory, and how those memories—whether embodied or embedded within spaces—are recorded, fragmented, and continually reconstructed. This investigation opens pathways for fiction and speculative dimensions to disrupt and challenge dominant narratives. Archival research is a recurring methodology in their work, encompassing both institutional and personal archives. From these materials, they craft speculative histories, responding to documents, physical traces, and spaces. In their engagement with the archive, they embody multiple performative roles: witness, observer, participant, and researcher—each inhabiting the temporary sites where events unfold.

JAM – Junction Arts & Media (formerly CATV, Community Access Television) is a 501(c)3 community-building organization that enables open public dialogue, expression, and government transparency by providing access to the expanding world of media. JAM serves the towns of Hartford, Hartland, and Norwich, VT, and Hanover, NH, and, SAU88 Lebanon, NH School District. JAM provides a platform to all residents where they can debate local issues, showcase artistic expression, and celebrate school and community happenings. JAM delivers independent access to local political issues through hybrid production, live broadcasting, and archiving of local government meetings.

Scheduled performances (below) | Performances begin at 7 PM

• Fri. Jan 23: For A Time – Novel Formats #5 
  • In collaboration with sound artist and vocalist Jean Carla Rodea and theater designer and visual artist Noah Mease
• Sat. Jan 24: For A Time – Novel Formats #5
  • In collaboration with sound artist and vocalist Jean Carla Rodea and theater designer and visual artist Noah Mease
• Fri. Feb 6 You Are Here, Change Change Change – Novel Formats #6
  • In collaboration with visual artist and professor of Philosophy Megan Craig
• Sat. Feb 7: You Are Here, Change Change Change – Novel Formats #6
  • In collaboration with visual artist and professor of Philosophy Megan Craig

Workshops | Saturday, Jan 18 & 31:

• 11:30-1 pm Spontaneous Sound Orchestra, taught by Taylor Ho Bynum | Ages 7 and up. click here to sign up
• 2-4 pm Spontaneous Dance Group, taught by Rachel Bernsen | Adults ages 18 and up.  click here to sign up