Claire Chase and Ross Karre of ICE go to the renowned gallery in Miami for an intimate performance FREE alongside groundbreaking works of art!
"I found myself standing in a grassland near the São Francisco river in Brazil. João Guimarães Rosa took me there. Then, I heard the St. John's river in Florida crying, it was calling on the São Francisco. Now I'm in the saw palmetto of the Everglades, but below--beneath the rivers, there are no borders" (Jamilah Sabur).
Beneath the rivers, there are no borders is a performance by Jamilah Sabur with music by the International Contemporary Ensemble. Divided into sequences, Sabur takes a formalist approach structuring her choreography based on the geographic spaces of the mouths of rivers in between terrestrial and marine environments. The St. Johns River in Florida is crying and calling on the São Francisco River in Brazil. With gestures occurring above the river and below, Sabur considers what it is to morph into sub-sonar soundwaves, used by sub-sonar profilers to detect reflections of waves off sediments and items on and below the seafloor. Collaborators include dancers: Roxana Barba and Grace Bishop; poet: Terri Witek; the International Contemporary Ensemble; and set designer Freddy Jouwayed.
BFI would like to acknowledge and express our gratitude to Little Haiti Cultural Complex for being a partner in bringing this performance to fruition.
Jamilah Sabur works across various disciplines including performance, video, and installation. Sabur was born in Saint Andrew, Jamaica and received her MFA in Visual Arts from University of California San Diego in 2014 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009. She is interested in embodied cognition, social mimicry, dissonance, ritual, and the uncanny. Recent exhibition and screening venues include Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL; Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL; ICA London; The 39th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, Havana, Cuba; (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain; Busan Corner Theater, Busan, South Korea. Sabur lives and works in Miami, FL. In 2017, Sabur was an artist-in-residence at the Crisp-Ellert Museum of Flagler College. Beneath the rivers, there are no borders, commissioned by Bas Fisher Invitational, marks the artist's directorial and choreographed debut for stage.
BFI is an artist run space dedicated to creativity, experimentation, and discourse in contemporary art. It aims to create a bridge between Miami and the International art world by curating a program that alternates between the local and the global. BFI is committed to building the Miami arts community by offering support for artist projects, in particular, WEIRD MIAMI, a platform for exhibitions and public programming that takes a behind the scenes look at the city and its artistic offerings. BFI is a not-for-profit funded primarily by grants, donations, and the sale of print editions.
In addition to this special collaboration, Claire Chase plays Felipe Lara's Meditation and Calligraphy, and Ross Karre plays Pauline Oliveros's Applebox Double!
ICE’s 2017-18 performances and commissioning activities are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.