Assemblage (In-Person)

Assemblage is a multidisciplinary dance and music performance that explores impermanence, ancestry, and artist identity, and the human effort to fit the pieces together.

Assemblage is a multidisciplinary, multimedia work featuring chamber and electronic music by Houston composer Chris Becker, choreographed and improvised movement by New York-based director Rachel Cohen, and real-time collage-making using zip-loc bags of curated materials left behind by Cohen’s mother, a quiet artist who passed away in February 2020. Through intimate videos and live performances, including music for vibraphone, harp, viola, and cello, Assemblage explores impermanence, ancestry, and artist identity, and the human effort to fit the pieces together.

Chris Becker is a composer whose music is equally inspired by rock and roll language, avant-garde jazz, dub compositional strategies, and musique concrète. Becker’s music for dance includes the score for choreographer Rachel Cohen’s evening-length work If The Shoe Fits (2005), named one of the best dance performances of 2005 by New York Times dance critic John Rockwell. In Houston and Texas, he has premiered collaborative works at Aurora Picture Show, the Silos at Sawyer Yards, and Splendora Gardens.

Rachel Cohen is a creator and performer in New York City. She has a lifelong interest in the symbiosis of humans and things, and the tensions, beauty, and humor therein. After studying dance and choreography with Claire Mallardi while at Harvard University, Rachel moved to NYC in 1997, entering the orbits of the uniquely creative communities of Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Galapagos Art Space, Cave, Norte Maar, The Construction Company, ChaShaMa, Ruth Zaporah's improvisation form Action Theater, and the Williamsburg Art & Historical (WAH) Center.

As director of Racoco Productions she works closely with performers, visual artists, composers, and musicians, fusing objects and materials with absurdist imagery, quixotic choreography, and inventive improvisation. Her favorite audience response: “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

This event is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

This program is being offered IN-PERSON only, and will NOT be recorded.

All times are CT. Please contact onlinelearning@junghouston.org with any questions.

Please register early. Programs with four or fewer participants are subject to cancellation, 48 hours prior to their start.