Enter the Faun

Oct 26: Q&A Gregg Mozgala, Peter Pucci, Kitty Lunn, and Kathleen Fitzgerald

2015. 68 m. Tamar Rogoff/Daisy Wright. First Run Features. US. English. Rated NR.

Series

“A choreographer and her muse explore the realm of the body with courage, honesty, and diligence.” (Claire Danes)

He walks with a lurch, his upper and lower halves out of sync. But Gregg Mozgala—an actor with cerebral palsy—displays unmistakable swagger. For choreographer Tamar Rogoff, his uneven gait conjured up the central character in Nijinsky’s Afternoon of a Faun, and she cast him in the iconic role for a new piece. A lengthy training period followed, as Rogoff explored innovative techniques to rewire Mozgala’s mind/body connection, stabilize and realign his musculature, and teach him to feel the ground under his feet. Enter the Faun follows their remarkable collaboration, capturing the dancer’s transformation from tentative neophyte to a “sexually charged, languorously animalistic presence” (New York Times).

PAST EVENTS

Q&A Gregg Mozgala, Kitty Lunn, Kathleen Fitzgerald, and Peter Pucci

Wednesday, Oct. 26 2016, 6:45

This event is over. View all of our upcoming events.

Gregg Mozgala is the artistic director of The Apothetae, a theater company dedicated to the production of works that explore and illuminate the “disabled experience.” A critically acclaimed actor and playwright, Gregg has appeared in New York Off- and Off-Off Broadway productions (including Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, The LAByrinth Theatre Company, La Mama ETC, Performance Space 122). After studying intensively with Tamar Rogoff, he was a member of her dance company for two years, notably dancing the role of the Faun in Diagnosis of a Faun, which toured nationally after its premiere at La Mama. He teaches and works with adults and young people with cerebral palsy and he helped start the first Cerebral Posse in New York City.

Kitty Lunn's love affair with dance began when she saw The Red Shoes. By fifteen, she was dancing principal roles with the New Orleans Civic Ballet, which led to a scholarship with the Washington Ballet, where she performed the ballet classics and worked with such legends as Martha Graham and Jose Limon. While preparing for her first Broadway show, Ms. Lunn slipped on ice, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke her back. Now a paraplegic using a wheelchair, she works diligently on behalf of performing artists with disabilities. In 1995 she founded Infinity Dance Theater, a non-traditional company of disabled and non-disabled dancers committed to bringing the joy and drama of movement to a new level of inclusion by changing the perception of what a dancer is. To this end, she has developed wheelchair dance techniques strongly rooted in and growing out of classical ballet and modern dance.

Kathleen Fitzgerald credits her dance background with giving her the skills and sensibilities to help her daughter, Jessica Rose, who has multiple, severe disabilities. After graduating from the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts, Kathleen danced in Europe as soloist and principal dancer with Netherlands Dance Theater and Ballet Frankfurt. She was a faculty member and School Director of the Steffi Nossen School of Dance until last year and remains active in the Westchester artistic community as the Production Manager for the Copland House Concerts at Merestead. She is an advocate for diversity in the arts that includes people with disabilities.

Peter Pucci is a Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk award winner. He codirected and choreographed Swag n’ Bach, which we showed in 2014, and last year’s short In the Garden. He has appeared numerous times onscreen as a professional dancer. Pucci is currently teaching at the Joffrey Ballet School in NYC and has hosted or been a guest speaker for Dance on Film programs since 2009.

This film is part of the Dance on Film series.