All The Relations was presented at Dance Limerick and Dance Cork Firkin Crane in November and December, 2023. More info soon!

Horse forms the second part of the Persuasion trilogy, which explores ethical dilemmas created where personal and public interests conflict. Please visit persuasiontrilogy.com to view the work.

Created with Angie Smalis. Live performance by: Angie Smalis, Colin Gee, Yumi Lee, Robert Jackson, and Mark Carberry. Narration by: Pius McGrath.

A solo dance work created with and performed by Angie Smalis at Wicklow ScreenDance Laboratory, in Bray, IE, on December 2, 2019.

Feral, a chamber opera dramatizing a 12th century Marie de France poem about a werewolf, is a comedy of manners about the difficulty of remaining human. Composed by Martin Brody as a Cantante Burlesque for performance by the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, soprano Nina Guo, and Colin Gee (performer/director). Wellesley College premiered Feral on April 21, 2019.

Julian’s Fasti , a concert work created by Colin Gee and composer/pianist John McDonald and premiered at Tufts University on May 4, 2019, is based on the commemorative events and dates listed in Ovid’s poem, Fasti. A Fasti is an almanac-like literary form listing commemorative dates and the cultural/historical narratives they commemorate. Ovid’s Fasti, published in 8AD, frequently flatters the Emperor in an attempt to have his exile lifted and return to Rome, and his rhetorical modes include agricultural, epic, religious, and commercial, among others. At the beginning of Ovid’s poem, the god of time, Janus, explains to the reader that this organization of events (as distinct episodes) is the only way we can understand time. Julian’s Fasti is an evening-length series of short pieces for piano and dancer.

“Madeline” is a staged work and a video series for three dancers, a narrator, and a jazz ensemble, based on the 1798 Irish Gothic novel of the same name by Regina Maria Roche.

Created by:
Angie Smalis
Colin Gee
Laura Dannequin
Damien Devaney
Music: Limerick Jazz Society
Costume Design: Giordana Giache
Set Design: Martin Shannon
Lighting Design: Pius McGrath
Production Management: Kerrie Ahern
Videography: Dominik Kosicki
Created with support of Arts Council, Dance Limerick, Nenagh Arts Centre, Ormston House, Smock Alley, Limerick Youth Theatre, and Limerick City and County Arts Office

John’s Query is a dance performed and created by Angie Smalis, Mark Carberry, and Colin Gee. Set in Limerick’s St. John’s Square, the work explores 1) our changing notion of the public square as both a location and a network, 2) mistranslations, and 3) the pursuit of shared perspective. Angie, Mark, and Colin perform three personae based on historical figures, all of whom inhabited St. John’s Square between 1700 and 1950. Featuring music by Jennifer Walshe, this anachronistic framing of communal life seeks a new understanding of what public life means in the context of twenty-first century connectivity and interdependence. As the lives of the characters intertwine in a dramatic narrative involving expectation, faith, betrayal, and misunderstanding, the question is posed: Will people always betray others for the sake of their own interests?

Choreographer/Director: Angie Smalis and Colin Gee | Performers: Angie Smalis, Mark Carberry, Colin Gee | Composer: Jennifer Walshe | Lighting Design: Gearoid O'Hallmhurain | Costume Design: Giordana Giache | Set Design: Martin Shannon | Audio Design: Colin Gee | Video Design: Patrick Kelley

John’s Query will be performed at Dance Limerick (premiere), Firkin Crane, and Project Arts Centre. See calendar for details.

Angelus Novus is a Monodrama with Choreography and Video. Composed by John Aylward. Libretto by Multiple Authors, adapt. Aylward. Commissioned by Le Laboratoire Cambridge.

Roberta Michel, flutes; Hassan Anderson, oboe; Jennifer Choi, violin; Carlos Cordiero, clarinets; John Popham, cello; and Sam Budish, percussion.

Jean-Philippe Wurtz, conductor; Colin Gee, choreography and dance; Alex Posen, costumes; and Steven Taylor and Sam Okerstrom-Lang, visual / animation designers.

Image: Paul Klee, 1920. India ink, colored chalk, and brown wash on paper, 318 x 242 mm. Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

"Lenore" is based on a poem of the same title written in 1774 by Gottfried Bürger. While the poem tells a Death and the Maiden tale this dance work interprets that theme as the individual's struggle against change, by looking at how expectations are associated with everyday objects. The work draws from the 17th century Dutch still life pictorial tradition of “Vanitas” - each object proposes a future by representing something Lenore longs for and feels due, however unlikely.

Created and performed by Angie Smalis and Colin Gee. Music by Jennifer Walshe. Sculpture by Kate Hodmon. Premiered on November 10, 2016, at Dance Limerick, in Limerick, Ireland.

Allegorical Gardening, was a performance of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis, on the Boston Greenway, with the installation of Ai WeiWei’s Zodiac Heads, by Roberta Michel (flute) and Vasko Dukovski (clarinet), with Colin Gee (persona).

This piece was presented at Abrons Arts Center, May 6-8, 2016, together with "Chaplet of Roses" which it followed in the program. The performance was part of a series, Travelogues, curated by Laurie Uprichard.

PROGRAM NOTES
Created and performed by: Colin Gee and Angie Smalis
Music by (They Go Out in Joy): Erin Gee
Audio Design: Colin Gee
Video and Set Design: Colin Gee
Costume Design: Angie Smalis and Colin Gee
Lighting Designer/Production Manager: Tricia Toliver
Video Post-production assistance (Chaplet of Roses):
Patrick Kelley
Travelogues Curator: Laurie Uprichard
Press Representation: Janet Stapleton
Presented in association with Irish Arts Center

They Go Out in Joy (2016), is a series of performance portraits drawn from photographs of Irish emigrants taken just prior to their departure from Cobh, Ireland in the 1920’s, when Cobh was the major port of emigration. The photos are part of a local collection belonging to Iris Toner, who's parents owned the boarding house though which these emigrants passed. Set against the background of present day Cobh, Gee and Smalis again portray all the roles, shifting between the public and private lives of each persona at a single moment of pause ⎯ imagining what has just happened or is about to happen.

They Go Out in Joy was initiated through a residency at Sirius Arts Centre, curated by Peggy Sue Amison. A portion of the work took place in residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance.

A new concert work with composer Erin Gee, based on three chapters from Moby Dick, premiering at DePaul University in Chicago in April 2016.

Chaplet of Roses (2014), a dance work for video, and live performance, is derived from a 15th century fragmentary Netherlandish tapestry, Honor Making a Chaplet of Roses, held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestry features an allegory of courtly love, depicted through the simultaneous action of four characters: one making a crown of roses with the caption ”I am Honor who makes chaplets for my children”, a second says, “To please my friend better, I shall put on this pretty hat,” an inscription above the third identifies him as “Pleasure,” and the fourth has the caption, “Homage to my good lady, my protectress.”

Created with Angie Smalis in Limerick, Ireland, the project seeks to explore a contemporary interpretation of a courtly love allegory as a notion of individual and community morality, by framing shifts between public and private life. Our interest centers on how “Honor” is linked to community and moral accountability through the consideration of multiple perspectives ⎯ multiple perspectives for the viewer, and the multiple personal perspectives of the figures depicted simultaneously in the tapestry.

Each two-minute video (at right) depicts a figure seen in the tapestry. The final video is documentation of the live performance. Chaplet of Roses premiered at Dance Limerick, December 18, 2014. 

Mouthpiece XX, (2014) a concert-opera by Erin Gee (composer/sibling), performed with Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Mouthpiece XX imagines the historical figure Matteo Ricci, who in the sixteenth century taught the "memory palace" technique of associatively linking memories to places within an architectural space. Here, Ricci is imagined as two separate fictional characters: Mathilde (based on Ricci) and her servant Matteo.

Mouthpiece XIII, Mathilde of Loci (2009), tells the story of the moments preceding the disappearance of a fictional exemplar of memory. In 1582, Mathilde left Loci for China in order to spread the knowledge of a mnemonic technique called the Method of Loci, or Memory Palace. The “Memory Palace” technique assigns items selected for memory to specific locations in an architectural space. The items are easily remembered by revisiting those spaces in the mind, to “see” the items attached there. Her pupils were young nobles, and her success with the Memory Palace, in addition to her own prodigious feats of memory, won her renown. In 1602, having been summoned to the Great Hall, she disappeared. This opera recounts the events that took place within the hall.

Mouthpiece VI +1 (2014), composed by Erin Gee, reframes an earlier ensemble piece as a dramatic work. It was performed by Fonema Consort and Colin Gee, in Chicago, on February 16, 2014. With video production by Patrick Kelley.

True Pete (2013), a performance piece responding to Stravinsky’s two-piano version of Petrushka, performed at Wellesley College in May, 2013. Also written for two pianos, True Pete features a solo performer in the role of Pete. With music by Martin Brody, piano by Randall Hodgkinson and Lois Shapiro, and Gee as Pete.

SLEEP (2008), is an opera in four acts with music and performance by Erin Gee, and libretto by Colin Gee. It was awarded the Teatro Minimo prize and the third act was premiered at the Zurich Opera house.

At the end of a seasonal dark period on a large body of water called the Sound, the sun rises above the glacial peaks for the first time in four months and fresh water runs again into the basin. Johnson, a former fire captain who now tends seasonal tourist boats on the Sound’s only ice-free harbor, rests at midday at the waters edge.

Just as those ignorant of the spot might pass time and time again over buried treasure without finding it, so do all creatures go daily to that World in sleep and not find it.

Chāndogya Upanishad 8.4.2.

The Band (2010), a performance work, was presented in the 2010 Whitney Biennial in response to Martin Kersels’s sculpture "5 Songs," on which it was performed. 

Objective Suspense (2009), responds to Alexander Calder’s work, Circus. It was commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and performed in the galleries of the exhibition, "Alexander Calder: The Paris Years."

Two Satires (2011), was a live performance of two ensemble works by Martin Brody, with the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at the American Academy in Rome.

In Progress

This is a dance work created for Chamber Dance Project, in Washington D.C..