Decay of The Angel
** featuring music by Philip Glass & images by Lois Greenfield **
April 1 - 11 at La MaMa E.T.C.

La MaMa E.T.C. presents choreographer Maureen Fleming’s latest evening of surreal movement poetry and theatrical multimedia production, Decay of the Angel, beginning April 1st at The Annex at La Mama. Curving her body into shapes of shattering beauty, this new work incorporates contemporary ikebana (the Japanese art of flower arrangement) by Japanese artist Gaho Taniguchi, film and images by award winning dance photographer Lois Greenfield and music by Philip Glass performed by a live pianist. Please note: this performance contains nudity and may not be suitable for younger viewers.

Crossing art forms and cultures, Decay of the Angel fuses elements of the Buddha’s sutra teaching on the five stages of the decay of heavenly beings with the ancient Japanese tale Hagoromo. This myth tells of a fisherman who discovers the cloth of an angel's wings caught in a branch. When the angel pleads with the fisherman to return the cloth, he agrees, but only if she will perform a celestial dance. Presented in five parts, the performance opens with Fleming suspended at the top of the theatre, creating the impression of a colorful mobile that is tumbling and circling downward. Using the idea of the angel and the fisherman being inside the same person, Decay of the Angel is a reflection on our loss of wings both personally and as a culture. The piece asks what is the celestial dance we must all discover to regain our own wings.

Decay of the Angel features a set, light, and visual design by Christopher Odo; sound by Brett R. Jarvis; costumes by Yasuko Tomonaga; video by Jeff Bush and Hiroshi Onihiro; contemporary ikebana photography by Tadayuki Naitoh; and live piano by Peter Phillips.

Maureen Fleming brings the discipline of a classicist and the imagination of an iconoclast to her unique style of movement inspired by her studies with Kazuo Ohno, the co-founder of butoh. Fleming went on to perform with his son, Yoshito Ohno, and to tour internationally with performance artist and choreographer Min Tanaka. Fleming continued her training in the US under the Cecchetti master Margaret Craske. Since 1994, she has conducted annual workshops at N.Y.U. and was recently a guest artist at Juilliard. She has gained international recognition on five continents for her singular form of multimedia performance at such venues as Italy's Spoleto Festivals, Japan's Butoh Festival, Mexico's Jose Limon Dance Festival, Iceland's Reykjavik Arts Festival, Columbia’s International Danza Contemporanea, France's International Mime Festival and Korea’s Seoul Performing Arts Festival, among others. Fleming is an Artist-in-Residence at La MaMa E.T.C.

Born in Japan to American parents, the effects of a severe accident when Fleming was two years old have influenced her approach to movement. The accident left a bone spur and the loss of the disk between her 4th and 5th vertebrae, a condition that would confine most people to a wheelchair. Her distinctive slow-motion style of twisting the body into extreme positions, where the blood builds up and stops, and then slowly untwisting so the blood flows more quickly, creates a kind of cleansing. With a strong belief in the body's regenerative powers, Fleming explores the evolution of her wounds. Her choreography emphasizes aligning the body's spiritual center while using the female body as a symbol for the earth’s cycles of regeneration.

Decay of the Angel runs April 1-11, Thursday - Sunday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm. Tickets are $20. The Annex at La Mama E.T.C. is located at 66 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue, accessible from the F train at 2nd Ave.). For tickets call 212-475-7710. Online ticketing is available at lamama.com.