Annie Dorsen
Annie Dorsen works in a variety of fields, including theatre, film, dance and, as of 2010, algorithmic theater. Most recently, “Yesterday Tomorrow” premiered at the Holland Festival (Amsterdam). Her previous algorithmic performance, “A Piece of Work” (…). “Hello Hi There” premiered at the streirischer herbst festival (Graz). She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical “Passing Strange”, which she also directed. Spike Lee has since made a film of her production of the piece,which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. Also in 2010, she collaborated with choreographer Anne Juren on “Magical” and with Ms. Juren and DD Dorviller on “Pièce Sans Paroles”.
In 2009 she created two music-theatre pieces, “Ask Your Mama”, a setting of Langston Hughes’ 1962 poem, composed by Laura Karpman and sung by Jessye Norman and The Roots (Carnegie Hall) ; and “ETHEL’s Truckstop”, seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Her pop-political performance project “Democracy in America” was presented at Performance Space 122 in spring 2008. “Spokaoke” (2012), is a participatory karaoke project that uses political and historical speeches in place of pop songs. Her short film, “I Miss”, originally the centerpiece of “Democracy in America”. In addition to numerous awards for “Passing Strange”, Dorsen received the 2014 Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theater and a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award. She is a Visiting Professor in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago.
Source: Annie Dorsen ‘s website ; Foundation for Contemporary Arts ‘s website.
