Photos by Joe Lamberti
UNKNOWNS is a collaboration between choreographer Darcy Lyons and visual artist Ivia Sky Yavelow. Accompanied by a live music score by Jesse Sparhawk playing harp, electric, bass, and pedal steel guitar. Dancers interact with an installation of soft sculptures that represent unknowns in ourselves, others, and the outside world. The sculptures and dancers react to each other, exploring changing relationships to the unknowns- an exploration that asks specific questions about unknowns as well as delving into the unknown as a general concept.
The evening length piece premiered at the 2023 Philadelphia Fringe Festival in a split bill with Rest Intervention, a work by Aura Fischbeck and Christy Funsch. Venue: Sound Space Performing Arts
Original Dance Cast: Des Amaiya, Yuying Chen, Arielle Ridley
Current Dance Cast: Shannon Lynn Brooks, Leanne Grieger, Michele Tantoco
Photos of Proceed with Caution by Ryan Collerd from the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival performances.
Proceed with Caution was directed and produced by Darcy Lyons
Co-choreographed, written and performed by Emma Elsmo, Gabi Montoya, Olivia Naegele, and Sammi Rosenfeld
Previous contributors to the work include Amalia Colon-Nava, Mason Rosenthal, and Carlos Campillo Rubio
Original Costumes created by Cybele Moon
Video created, compiled, and edited by Darcy Lyons
About proceed with caution:
Proceed with Caution grapples with personal, social, and global security and trust in the present-day—a time of global violence, the Trump presidency, mass shootings, and the #MeToo movement. A group of performers explore security through dance, video projection, and spoken and recorded words,
Refreshed and expanded after it’s premiere in the 2018 Fringe Festival, the work directed by Darcy Lyons is back to take the stage at one of Philadelphia’s best venues for dance.
Expanded and updated over the past year, Proceed with Caution includes a new twenty minute section about security after 9/11. The central theme of the work comes from security expert Bruce Schneier. He writes: “Security is both a reality and a feeling and they’re not the same thing… The foundation of security is trust, both personal trust and global trust.”
The piece begins to address these questions: How do humans build trust in dance? How do we build trust with each other? How do we build trust in the world at large? How do we address and assess our fears about personal safety? How do our personal feelings of security intersect with global security? How do we make an impact on security through art and activism? With the support of projected video dispersed throughout the piece, the group of performers tell raw stories in their own voices and bodies of their real life experiences of feeling safe, feeling scared, and being truly endangered. The new hour-long version evolves as it moves from the personal to the global, addressing modern issues and how they affect our individual and collective associations and understandings of safety within an increasingly turbulent humanity. Proceed with Caution does not claim to have all the answers, but it’s worth experiencing because the work takes a brave step into exploring one of today’s greatest challenges that everyone can relate to: security.
5 Stages of Grief was performed in Lyons and Tigers production Bricolage in March 2017. Photos below by Ryan Collerd.
Bricolage was an evening of work choreographed by Darcy Lyons and Philly’s up and coming choreographers.
Lyons and Tigers (Darcy Lyons) presented a new dance theater piece in reaction to the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.
Co-created with performers: Celine McBride, Olivia Naegele, Meredith Stapleton, Margot Steinberg, and Mary-Carmen Webb
Bricolage also featured pieces created by:
Celine McBride
Meredith Stapleton
Mary-Carmen Webb and Harlee Trautman
Lyons and Tigers presents PATCHWORKS
An evening of new experimental dance created by Darcy Lyons and collaborators
Friday and Saturday May 13 and 14, 2016 at 8 PM at The Iron Factory
118 Fontain Street, Philadelphia, PA
Photos by Ryan Collerd
HOME centers around the performer’s personal experiences with home through memories, feelings, and transformation of the fabric house on stage.
Choreographed by Darcy Lyons in collaboration with Katie Bank
Performed by Katie Bank
Visual art/set design by Alice Thompson
WEEKEND DANCES
These pieces were choreographed by participants in Darcy Lyons’ weekend choreography workshop April 23 and 24, 2016. This is what can happen in eight hours of working together:
TRIOS: choreographed and performed by Consuelo Marie Barbetta, Jenna Silva, Harlee Trautman, and Mary-Carmen Webb
SOLO 1: Choreographed and performed by Harlee Trautman
SOLO 2: Choreographed and performed by Mary-Carmen Webb
ELEANOR How does seeing the exact same dance in two different contexts change our perceptions? How can song structure inhibit or enhance the accompanying choreography?
Choreographed by Darcy Lyons in collaboration with Julee Mahon
Performed (twice in a row) by Julee Mahon
BRICK is an architectural, emotional, and textural exploration of real and imagined walls.
Choreographed by Darcy Lyons in collaboration with Caroline O’Brien
Performed by Caroline O’Brien
PRACTICE is a raw showing of process based art through charcoal, yarn, paper, bodies, and music. A performer and a visual artist address interpretation across different mediums through improvised performance.
Created and performed in the moment by dancer Darcy Lyons and visual artist Ivia Yavelow
Technical Crew: The Nascent Theater LLC
Technical Director: Rebecca Brissette
The Nascent Theater LLC is a new Theater Production company in the Philadelphia area. We offer services from Front of House to Back of House, including Stage Managers, Technical Directors, Lighting Design, Board Operators, Stage Hands, and Ushers. We will travel to the theater of your performance as well as to site specific performances. We can also assist with installs. For more information, business inquires, and bookings please contact our owner Rebecca Brissette at rebeccajbrissette@gmail.com
WALLS premiered in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival September 17-19, 2015! Thank you to all of the artists involved, our audience, and our donors!
WALLS meshes dance, video projection, and visual art to explore how and why humans construct, strengthen, weaken, and deconstruct actual and figurative walls personally and interpersonally in history, biology, psychology, politics, and art. How are these walls beneficial or detrimental to the people who create them?
Production and Direction: Darcy Lyons
Choreography by Darcy Lyons and performers Kate Abernethy, Lora Allen, Julee Mahon, and Melissa Rodis
Video Design by New York based artist, Max Bernstein
Original Music by Philadelphia based artist, Heller Wahn
Visual Art by...
Joel Chartkoff
Carolyn Coyle
Mike Harpring http://mikeharpring.com/
Antonietta Kies https://instagram.com/antoniettaelainekies/
Rachel Singel www.rachelsingel.com
Alice Thompson www.alicethompsonart.com
Mauri Walton http://www.pixoto.com/mauri.walton.here
Ivia Sky Yavelow http://iviaskyyavelow.com/
daughter premiered in Group Motion’s Spiel Uhr Winter 2014: Dark Matters, which featured the compositions of the 2014 International Alliance for Women in Music Annual Concert winners, including a musical piece called "daughter", an original composition by Line Tjørnhøj, Denmark.
Darcy Lyons was asked to create choreography for "daughter".
Performers/Collaborators: Leanne Grieger and Elizabeth Weinstein
Photos by Bill Hebert
MAEI MAEI AEIM is an experimental dance/music/video/visual art piece created by Darcy Lyons and Steve DiGregorio (Cello/Electronics/Designer) The piece is a structured improvisation that focuses on the textures of naturally occurring elements and emulates and explores the ways in which these textures inhabit their own unique cycles of change.
Music by Steve DiGregorio
Sculpture and Projections by
Darcy Lyons and Steve DiGregorio
Venue: The Iron Factory in Philadelphia, with it's unfinished beauty, compliments the piece by representing the natural processes that all textures can and will go through in time if left to their own (natural) devices. The audience can view the piece from anywhere in the periphery of the space, eliminating the idea of proscenium.
Graphic design by Celine McBride
Safekeeping explores the psychology and reality of security.
Original text by performers and author, Bruce Schneier.
Music by Evergreen Contemporary Gamelan
Performers/Collaborators: Stuart Meyers, Mason Rosenthal, Lisa Rothstein, and Grace Stern
Tip these turbulent scales is a dance portrait that explores the relationship between financial stability and mental illness.
Choreographed by Darcy Lyons
Performer/Collaborator: Lindsay Browning
Premiered at Group Motion's Spiel Uhr series February 2012
Photos by Bill Hebert
Opened, Closed, Etc was originally created and performed at CalArts in 2007 and restaged in 2012 in Philadelphia for the Performance Garage Open House.
Choreographed by Darcy Lyons
Originally performed by Jordan Morley
Performed by Austin Selden in 2012
Music by The Books
Photos by Bill Hebert
