winter artists in residence showing

December 16 | 7 pm, 9 pm |$10 at the door |2100 Chestnut St. 2nd Floor. Philadelphia, PA 19121
    yes, this is she is a duet created and performed by Maddie Hopfield and Kayla Bobalek, inspired by today’s increasing onslaught of scam phone calls and the minefield of navigating contemporary communication. Maddie has been receiving dubious tax fraud phone calls for a while now. Kayla’s grandpa lost everything he had to telephone marketing schemes. Time and communication inside of relationships expands and contracts between phone calls and texting, as both of their families live far away (phone calls, voicemails, guilt), yet as collaborators they live and work together (texts, telepathy). With both frivolousness and gravity, Maddie and Kayla use speech and movement to investigate the intricately connected world of phones, family, and language.
yes, this is she is the cumulative presentation of UMA’s winter Artists in Residence season. The summer season, the inaugural season, presented two powerful local artists: Majestique and Yvonne Pilar. Maddie & Kayla were awarded the Winter Residency, as part of a test drive of UMA’s a new choreographic fellowship that provides training for dancers throughout the summer, requires the artists learn and participate in DIY production, and cumulates in an evening length performance. UMA, an organization only one year old, is proud to be sharing its resources by offering artist in residency opportunities three times a year, with an annual call in the spring. These residencies include free studio space, hip hop and yoga classes, artistic support, and a cumulative performance.
BIOS

• Maddie Hopfield is a dancer, choreographer, and prose/poetry writer from Culver City, California (who loves to write about herself in the third person). She graduated from Bard College with a B.A. in Written Arts and Dance before moving to Philadelphia. She has performed with the Leah Stein Dance Company, and once spent a week dancing in a barn in the name of Lily Kind’s Wolfthicket project. She currently writes for thINKingDANCE.
  
• Kayla Bobalek grew up studying ballet in Topsham, Maine. She moved on to receive her B.A. in Dance from Bard College (where she dove deeper into a love of  surrealist literature, anatomy, and explored movement that was a little more…uh... floppy?) At Bard she also met her collaborator and future Philly roommate, Maddie Hopfield. She is currently working as a teaching artist in a K-8 school in North Philadelphia through the program ArtistYear.