The Imposter Series is the current collaborative performance vehicle for dropshift dance, a performance company that is a provocative, inquisitive and authoritative investigator of movement. Conceived through a collaborative incubation laboratory of movement, sound, and visual installation, the work engages audience with dialogue, choice, and experimental practice. dropshift was founded in 2009 by Chicago based artist Andrea Cerniglia as a movement project dedicated to a collaborative and investigative studio practice and pushing the boundaries of the art form in performance.
The next installment of the Imposter Series is entitled FloatBrilliance and involves the artistic work of Andrea Cerniglia with various collaborators in movement, music composition, interactive set design, and video. The full work will premiere in June 2016 at Links Hall, Chicago. In March 2016, the company will travel to Nashville, TN for the ExchaNge dance fest and will share in-progress excerpts of the work. The Imposter series is designed to engage audiences through installation-based performances and encourage proactive choice in vantage point, proximity, and duration of engagement. dropshift encourages audiences to move around during performance and to make choices about what, how, and when to watch.
FloatBrilliance explores honest physicality and how we embody fulfillment. The immersive evening length work explores fulfilling space physically, visually, and sonically while investigating the blurring of roles between movers, video artists, and composers. Dancers explore when movement is exhaustive, thorough, and fulfilled. Movement vignettes reveal refined spatial relationships, anticipatory response, and sensory feedback through touch and aural elements. The performers rely on one another to fulfill choreographic sequences while creating a playful, organic community amongst movers. Physical partnerships are built from playful shifts of time and weight and explore the sensations of tossing, diving, and catching to physicalize gravity’s effect on the body. The overall work looks at the spectrum of physical states that exists in response to fulfilling a role, existence within a synergetic partnership, and physicalizing honest movement. Movers combine in duet, trio, and quartet sequences to explore timelessness, a soft sternum and heart, and quirky gestural conversations between bodies.
Our campaign will partially support artist fees, venue rental, touring costs, and the commission of an original musical score. FloatBrilliance is Phase 3 of the Imposter Series and with this campaign’s success, it will premiere and tour to Nashville, TN in the Spring of 2016. FloatBrilliance marks dropshift’s 6th anniversary season and it’s completion enables us to continue to bring our work to more diverse audiences and to gain valuable feedback from the experience.
Any contribution above the value of the goods and services received by the donor is tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
dropshift dance is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the purposes of dropshift dance must be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
dropshift dance is a provocative, inquisitive and authoritative investigator of movement. Conceived through a collaborative incubation laboratory of movement, sound, and visual installation, the work engages audience with dialogue, choice and experimental practice. DSD works through a rigorous process of studio investigation to create work that energizes the space and creates an alternate world for the performer and viewer. Using specific directives of quality, imagery, and trajectory DSD creates movement environments that allow the viewer an opportunity to connect and engage with what is abstract by layering the physical experience with one that is human and authentic.
Andrea Cerniglia, Founder and Artistic Director of dropshift, began dancing at an early age while growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Dance has always been a large part of her life and her training ultimately led to a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Much of Ms. Cerniglia’s exposure to modern dance came during her collegiate years; she quickly fell in love with the form for its endless freedom and ability to give the audience such a powerful and visceral experience.
Currently a contemporary artist based in Chicago, IL, she is a performer, choreographer, laban practitioner, and seasoned educator. Ms. Cerniglia’s work has been shown internationally in Vancouver, BC as well as locally at Links Hall, The Hairpin Arts Center, I AM Logan Square Gallery, The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, Produce Music and Dance, Hamlin Park and Holstein Park, Chicago, IL. She is a long time collaborator with Zephyr Dance with whom she performed from 2004 to 2013. She received her Graduate Laban Certificate in Movement Analysis from Columbia College Chicago in 2015. Ms. Cerniglia has performed at such Chicago venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Dance Center of Columbia College, Harold Washington Library Theater, the Athenaeum Theater, and the Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts. She has also performed in New York City at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance Space, the Cunningham Studio Theater, Mulberry Street Theater, and Triskelion Arts and in Vancouver, BC at CBC Studios.
Ms. Cerniglia has been a part of residency and master class work within the elementary grade levels as well as at such colleges as Columbia College Chicago and Illinois Wesleyan University. She has also taught and designed arts integrated curriculum in the Chicago Public schools through Zephyr’s arts integrated education programs uniting classroom curriculum with dance. In the spring of 2009, she was named Artistic Director of the Dance Foundation Youth Company Chicago, a dance group providing opportunity and scholarship to Chicago’s underserved youth founded at Fisher Dance Center, now R&B Dance, where she continues to support dance education and appreciation.