Faculty Rosanna Gamson Brings Still/Restless Performance to El Camino College

From ‘Still/Restless’ at REDCAT. | Photo: Steve Gunther

CalArts faculty and choreographer Rosanna Gamson will present her dance-theater production Still/Restless this Saturday (March 18) at 8 pm at El Camino College in Torrance, Calif. The performance, comprised of “intimate and volatile” duets, is inspired by Oneirology, the study of dreams. It is accompanied by a wide range of musical styles ranging from works composed in the 17th century to contemporary post-rock instrumentals.

Gamson staged Still/Restless at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) last year as a two-act performance that built on Gamson’s original piece Still. Still debuted at REDCAT’s New Original Works Festival in 2014 and was reviewed as “a beautiful dance of the psyche…. a very sensual and quite unforgettable experience,” by Broadway World. REDCAT’s program notes state that when combined, Still/Restless is “rich with tender and violent movement, explosive athleticism and stunning moments of stillness.”

In Gamson’s artist statement, she writes:

While striving to build a complete aesthetic world for each project, I use the structural conventions of melodrama—a narrator asking moral questions of the audience, big theatrical effects, virtuosity, heightened emotion set to music—inviting audiences to connect to the resonance of the subject and the legibility of theatrical metaphors.

The piece features several CalArts students and alumni, including current MFA design students Yonit Olshan (Theater BFA 16) and Carlo Maghirang (Theater MFA 17); alumni Jonathan Bryant (Dance MFA 15), Alexandria Yalj (Dance MFA 07), Kearian Giertz (Dance BFA 16), Kayla Johnson (Dance BFA 16), Megan McCarthy (Dance BFA 12), Mallory Fabian (Dance BFA 16), and current student Kevin Zambrano (Dance BFA 18).

Gamson earned both her BFA and MFA in dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has performed around the world in the dances of Yvonne Rainer, workshop performances of Robert Wilson, and was a member of Andrew DeGroat & Dancers. In addition to dance, Gamson studied poetry with Charles Simic, Louise Glück and Thomas Lux and her poems have been published in many literary magazines and journals.