the Vivian girls // 2005

Premiered
2005
Location(s)
Choreography
Pat Graney
Music
Martin Hayes
Amy Denio
Lighting
Jeff Bickford
Costumes
Frances Kenny
Slide Design
Mode Studios
Performers
Sara Jinks
Diana Cardiff
Alison Cockrill
Saiko Kobayashi
Amelia Reeber
Cathy Sutherland

Sara Jinks whispers in the ear of Diana Cardiff affecting her dreams as she sleeps during rehearsal for "the Vivian girls."

Photographer:

Cathy Sutherland with (L-R) Sara Jinks, Alison Cockrill, Saiko Kobayashi, and Diana Cardiff..

Diana sitting, two Blengins standing (Sara, Cathy)

Sara on top of Large book with two peeking out of side.

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Pictured:

Cathy pointe shoes, large Darger in background.

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theater
Pat Graney brings her company of dancers and performers from Seattle to present Vivian Girls.

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Flight of Fancy: A dance icon unearths some winged crusaders
As far as anyone knew, Henry Darger was just a reclusive, aged janitor. But when he died at age 80, his landlord cleaned out his apartment and found paintings, drawings and more than 15,000 pages of text. Contained within was the cartoonish fantasy world of the Vivian Girls, hermaphroditic, winged children who take on crazed adult soldiers to save the world. Fortunately, dancer Pat Graney's career is more available to the general public. The Seattle-based choreographer has created more than 40 original dance pieces since 1979. Her latest concoction, based on Darger's paintings and words, comes to Houston this weekend as a joint presentation of DiverseWorks and Society for the Performing Arts.

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An onstage home for outsider art
Graney is intensely visual, and says her attraction to Darger's paintings was immediate. When a friend showed her a catalog from a gallery retrospective, Graney says she thought to herself, "I don't know what this is, but I have to use it." She found inspiration in Darger's stilted forms, their strangely limited movement and visceral formalism.

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DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP CONCLUDES SPRING SEASON WITH TWO PREMIERES
Pat Graney Company: Seattle-based Pat Graney once again takes visual art as a point of departure. In “the Vivian girls,” a New York premiere, she is inspired by the gorgeous, yet disturbing paintings by reclusive Chicago artist  Henry Darger (1892-1973), many of which are projected as part of the performance. Discovered after his death, Darger’s 15,000-page book, “The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal,” is filled with his beautiful watercolor collages illustrating the often violent adventures of the girls. Drawing directly from these images, the choreographer creates a movement vocabulary specific to the subject and costumes her five dancers as Darger characters; they emulate the Vivian girls with brunette wigs and white dresses, and appear en pointe wearing colorful butterfly-like wings, as another crowd of creatures from Darger’s imagination. Taking place amid a clutter of giant books, the work is accompanied by an original score for accordion and fiddle by Amy Denio and Martin Hayes.

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Dance Listings
PAT GRANEY COMPANY This Seattle troupe comes to Dance Theater Workshop with the New York premiere of "the Vivian girls" (above), inspired by the life and art of Henry Darger, a notoriously reclusive Chicago artist who mopped floors by day for a charity organization. But at night in his crowded one-room apartment, he created his own fantasy realm in the form of a lavishly illustrated 15,000-page novel and 300 paintings. Darger's writings and artworks chronicle the turbulent battles of the innocent Vivian sisters against an evil male empire. The images are often as disturbing as they are fantastic, for they abound with psychological implications of cruelty and enslavement. Pat Graney, a choreographer who often takes the visual arts as a point of departure, will have reproductions of some of Darger's imagery projected during her work for five dancers, costumed like characters from the paintings and novel. For instance, the Vivian girls are in brunette wigs and white dresses, while butterfly-like creatures wear colorful wings and dance en pointe. And all the adventures take place on a stage cluttered with giant books. 

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THE LISTINGS: APRIL 29-MAY 5; PAT GRANEY COMPANY
This Seattle troupe comes to Dance Theater Workshop with the New York premiere of ''the Vivian girls'' (above), inspired by the life and art of Henry Darger, a notoriously reclusive Chicago artist who mopped floors by day for a charity organization. But at night in his crowded one-room apartment, he created his own fantasy realm in the form of a lavishly illustrated 15,000-page novel and 300 paintings. Darger's writings and artworks chronicle the turbulent battles of the innocent Vivian sisters against an evil male empire. The images are often as disturbing as they are fantastic, for they abound with psychological implications of cruelty and enslavement. Pat Graney, a choreographer who often takes the visual arts as a point of departure, will have reproductions of some of Darger's imagery projected during her work for five dancers, costumed like characters from the paintings and novel. For instance, the Vivian girls are in brunette wigs and white dresses, while butterfly-like creatures wear colorful wings and dance en pointe. And all the adventures take place on a stage cluttered with giant books.

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Henry Darger's Fantastic Landscape
Based in Seattle, Pat Graney has taken on the impossible task of turning Henry Darger’s artwork into a dance. Graney wisely does not attempt to take on the plot of the epic. Instead she creates images and episodes taking their initial poses from Darger’s illustrations. It’s a series of tableaux vivants. The work opens on a set that consists of the hand bound book manuscripts in “Alice in Wonderland” scale. There are projections at the back, first of Darger’s room in Chicago, then of his illustrations. Graney’s five dancers, in pinafores and smocks as well as black pageboy wigs, become the illustrations. The tableaux unfold at a leisurely pace to haunting music by Amy Denio and Martin Hayes.

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Dance-theater Piece The Vivian Girls Brings Artist's Obsessive Paper Images To Life.
Choreographer Pat Graney stands in front of a vividly colored projection of a painting featuring curly-haired children who look like they stepped down from an early Campbell's Soup can or a Morton Salt label. These innocent-appearing kids are the subject of outsider artist Henry Darger's obsessive paintings and collages, and the inspiration for Graney's dance-theater piece, the Vivian girls, which will be performed at the Florida Dance Festival next weekend.

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Florida Dance Festival: Axis ably fulfills aspirations
At the Byron Carlyle Theater on Friday, Seattle choreographer Pat Graney sprung those sweeties from the idylls and turmoil of Darger's folios in the Vivian girls. The evening-long dance drama, amazingly enough, avoided sensationalism despite the frequent display of the characters' hermaphrodite nature (sewed-on in white fabric). A doll-like innocence prevailed among the five dancers, who hinted at hopscotch and other childhood activities as they scurried on and around stacks of huge books. Pitter-pattering or palsied, to plaintive voice, fiddle, and accordion, the black-wigged girls animated Darger's art, projected as background.

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Based on Henry Darger's works, Vivian Girls takes flight
Seattle's highly respected Pat Graney Company brings Darger's androgynous Vivian Girls to life via a new modern dance on Friday. Darger's 12-volume, 15,000-page opus and hundreds of large watercolors tell an epic tale of winged boy-girl creatures who fight militiamen to save society from death and destruction. "The guy obviously didn't have a life," Graney said via phone last week before heading to New York's Dance Theater Workshop, where The Vivian Girls finished a four-night run last night. "But the world in which he lived is absolutely fascinating."

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The Listings: May 6-12 - "Pat Graney Company"
PAT GRANEY COMPANY (Tonight and tomorrow) Henry Darger, an eccentric and reclusive American artist, inspires a fantastic multimedia dance production. 7:30, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077 or www.dtw.org, $20, $12 for members, students and 60+. (Anderson) 

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Beauties, beasts battle in fragile, fevered realm
"The Vivian girls" makes one thing eminently clear: Pat Graney does her homework. The nationally renowned local choreographer spent nearly three years completing this piece, which is based on the paintings of hermetic outsider artist Henry Darger. Graney's work reveals such a close study and understanding of the reclusive, odd man (who died in 1973), it seems she climbed inside his head and returned to show us what she found.

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Choreographer Graney ends a phase of her career with restaging of "Vivian girls"
The willowy dancers motion abruptly. Jerking their limbs beneath Crayola-colored schoolgirl dresses, the women emanate a silent strength as muscular legs disappear into short white socks and Mary Jane shoes. These contrasts magnify the oddness of "the Vivian girls," Pat Graney's take on outsider artist Henry Darger's work. Graney's piece lacks a traditional narrative. Instead, she paints vignettes by blending dance and theater.

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Critics' picks for the week for the week of Jan. 25-Feb. 1
Seattle's most ingenious contemporary-dance choreographer presents her first major new work in four years, "The Vivian Girls." It's a riff on the visionary and disturbing artworks ofHenry Darger, with an original score by Amy Denio and Martin Hayes. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Ave., Seattle; $24-$34 (206-292-ARTS or www.ticketmaster.com; information, www.themoore.com).

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'Vivian' distills unearthly beauty
In an eerily beautiful fusion of visual art and theatrical performance, the premiere of Pat Graney's "the Vivian girls" at the Moore last weekend brought to life the obsessive paintings and collages of reclusive artist Henry Darger.

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Graney brings artist's obsessive images to life in 'Vivian girls'
Choreographer Pat Graney stands in front of a vividly colored projection of a painting featuring curly-haired children that look like they stepped down from an early Campbell's Soup can or a Morton Salt label. These innocent-appearing kids are the subject of outsider artist Henry Darger's obsessive paintings and collages and the inspiration for Graney's new dance-theater piece, "the Vivian girls," which premieres at the Moore Theatre tonight. Graney, 49, her red hair swept into a long ponytail, bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet during an open rehearsal last week, looked a little like one of the Vivian girls herself.

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Pat Graney's Dance with Darger
"Beautiful is the sun, which because of its wonderful splendor and radiance, was adored as a divine being by so many pagan nations. But more beautiful is the form of the Vivian Girls."

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Graney brings artist's obsessive images to life in 'Vivian girls'
Choreographer Pat Graney stands in front of a vividly colored projection of a painting featuring curly-haired children that look like they stepped down from an early Campbell's Soup can or a Morton Salt label. These innocent-appearing kids are the subject of outsider artist Henry Darger's obsessive paintings and collages and the inspiration for Graney's new dance-theater piece, "the Vivian girls," which premieres at the Moore Theatre tonight.

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Performance Timeline