Lucky! Lucky! Lucky!

Heads Up, Lucky Pennies. Some incredible things have been happening...

In an astonishing act of generosity, The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation surprised us with a 3-year, $30,000 operating support grant from their SEED Fund. We are so humbled, thrilled and encouraged by the news!

Creative Loafing gave us two honors in their Best Of 2012 Issue: Best reason to hole up in a cardboard box (Threshold) and Best Dancer (Blake Beckham).

In recognition of the ambitious vision behind Threshold, The Lucky Penny received Spotlight Recognition from The National Endowment for the Arts.

This fall, Lucky's Blake Beckham received a Community Impact Award from Emory's Center for Creativity & Arts.

Our deepest thanks to these fine folks, along with Lucky's supporters, sponsors, volunteers and audiences.

Check out the video by Room Eleven Media

Threshold from The Lucky Penny on Vimeo.

We'll be screening more footage, and giving an artist talk on Tuesday, October 9th at 7:30 pm, in Emory's Schwartz Center Dance Studio. Come experience insights from the design team, discover more about our creative process, and learn about the choreography, imagery and concepts driving the work!

Threshold - the reviews are in!

Photo by Bobbi Jo Brooks.  Email media requests for photography to blake at theluckypenny.org

Check out the reviews in BurnAway and ArtsAtl

Plus a photo slide show at Creative Loafing

Can't get enough? Save the date for an artist talk on October 9th at Emory University. For this Threshold Redux, we will share some gorgeous documentation by Room Eleven Media plus dig in to the ideas, imagery and collaborative process behind the work. 

Finally, we want to say: THANK YOU, ATLANTA. The Lucky Penny feels incredibly grateful for the many ways our community came together to support Threshold. It was an outrageous idea, a profound effort, and a very special piece to create for Atlanta audiences.  Here are some of the incredible numbers…

Days to build the cardboard house: 28
Hours to complete construction and technical production: 2,000
Lucky Penny artists, crew members and staff employed: 30
Volunteers: 70
Volunteer hours logged: 900
Supplies: 800 pieces of hexacomb and corrugated cardboard plus over 100 gallons of wood glue, hot glue and liquid nails
Average cups of coffee consumed per day by the crew: 50

Buy your tickets to Threshold HERE
$14 students and artists | $25 general
Thursday, 8/16 @ 8pm
Friday, 8/17 @ 8pm-SOLD OUT!
Saturday, 8/18 @ 2pm + @ 8pm
Sunday, 8/19 @ 2pm

Advanced ticket sales are strongly encouraged due to limited seating capacity at each performance. Walk-up transactions by cash or check only. GA Tech students may pay by Buzz Card. The box office opens 1 hour prior to show time. Please plan to arrive at least 15 minutes early. Late seating is strictly prohibited due to the distinct nature of the production and set design. 

Performances take place at DramaTech Theater, located at the northeast corner of the Ferst Center, on Georgia Tech's campus.

Threshold: Kickstarter Campaign

The Lucky Penny is proud to present Threshold, a new work by Atlanta choreographer Blake Beckham, noted for her recent works American Muscle (Eyedrum, Emory University and Dance Truck at PICA's Time-Based Art Festival) and PLOT, a critically acclaimed production at The Goat Farm Arts Center, named Best Dance Performance of 2011 by Creative Loafing.

This summer, Beckham challenges a community of architects, engineers, paper scientists, sculptors and theater technicians to design and build a two-story home made entirely out of paper products. Sponsors so far include Idea Capital Atlanta and Possible Futures. As we seek further support from other cultural institutions and corporations, we ask YOU to pitch in a little. Your donation will go directly towards paying our artists. Thank you for your genuine support and enthusiasm for our work and the artists we believe in.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1042894430/threshold-3?ref=live

The Lucky Penny Turns 1

Birthday Party

Join us for dancing, drinks, cake and cardboard

Thursday, June 28, 7 to 10 pm
MASS Collective, 364 Nelson St SW

MASS Collective offers a perfect spot for celebrating The Lucky Penny's first successful year of advancing artistry and cultivating community in Atlanta. $15 for drinks*, cake, and a special preview performance of Threshold, Beckham's new work for a house made out of cardboard, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects. Bring your heaviest bag of pennies for a chance to win free tickets to the Threshold premiere in August. Then hit the cardboard dance floor with guests DJ Git 'Em Gurl and Brigitte Bidet. Admission by cash, check or Lucky Pass.

* Drink quantities limited and ID required
Special thanks to our hosts, MASS Collective, a multi-disciplined group of makers, creators, artists and engineers. www.masscollective.org

The Lucky Pass
Admission to 5 Lucky Events: $50 artists or $75 general

Your pass grants you discounted admission to our 2012 season, featuring distinguished national guests and local talent who make contemporary art with intention, rigor and grit. Events include: 

-our Birthday Party on June 28
-priority seating for the August premiere of Threshold August 16-19
-our apocalypse art party on 12.21 at The Goat Farm Arts Center
-2 other eligible performances, workshops or presentations
-plus, invitations to private events with our community of Lucky artists

Artist Talk

Artist Talk:  RE: Performance 

On Wednesday, April 25^th at 7:00 pm, a powerful trio of performance artists will reunite in Atlanta for a discussion about contemporary practices of re-performance that have gained increasing popularity amongst curators and institutions of visual culture. Los Angeles-based artist, Adam Overton and New York-based performer Anya Liftig will join Atlanta’s own Andy Ditzler for a talk moderated by Lucky Penny Artistic Director, Blake Beckham at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

ANDY DITZLER, Atlanta, GA | frequentsmallmeals.com
Andy Ditzler was trained as a percussionist at Indiana University and is a composer, performer, and curator living in Atlanta. He is a founding member of the Artadia award-winning art collective John Q. He has curated over one hundred programs in the ongoing series Film Love, which presents historical avant-garde and experimental cinema to general audiences. Currently he is a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies and a George W. Woodruff Fellow in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University. As a musician, Ditzler has performed in contexts ranging from classical and jazz to free improvisation and rock. As composer and performer, Ditzler has explored video, audio phonography, performance art, and other forms. His one-man theater show Yes and No was commissioned by Clayton State Theater and premiered there in 2002, later running in Atlanta. In 2006 he released his first music CD, Songs From Yes and No. This was followed by the single Solstice in 2008, with a music video directed by underground film legend George Kuchar. Ditzler released Closet Studies, his latest collection of songs, in 2011. In 2012 he will revive the performance art work Desirium Probe by the New York artist James Nares – the work’s first presentation since 1978.

ANYA LIFTIG, New York, NY | anyaliftig.com

Anya Liftig’s work has been featured at TATE Modern, Highways Performance Space, Exit Art, Panoply Performance Lab, Surreal Estate, Eyedrum, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Center for Performance Research, Chez Bushwick, Grace Exhibition Space, Yale University, INCUBATEChicago, [performance space] london, Performance Art Institute San Francisco, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, OVADA, Roves and Roams, University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, Mess Hall, Joyce Soho and many other venues. Her piece,  “The Anxiety of Influence,” was an intervention into Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” retrospective at MOMA. Liftig dressed as the elder artist and sat across from her all day. Her work has been published and written about in The New York Times Magazine, Bomb, The Wall Street Journal, Emergency Index, The Art Life, Vogue Italia, Marie Claire Italia, Heeb, Loser, The Other Journal, Flavorpill, Hyperallergic, Mix Magazine, Next Magazine, Now and Then, X-tra, Stay Thirsty, New York Magazine and many others. She is a graduate of Yale University and Georgia State University and has received recent grant and residency support from the University of Antioquia, Casa Tres Patios-Medellin Colombia, and Flux Projects in Atlanta.

ADAM OVERTON, Los Angeles, CA | plus1plus1plus.org

a abilities — acknowledgment, action — adam am, and angeles artist awareness, based between bodymindperson by challenges — [co]existence — composer contact continually depths distance, experimental experiments fascinated: fueled, I, in individuals intimate is living — los maps massage music — my — of overton performer playfully plumbs practices, presence radical rhythm, subjects teacher — the therapist — through transformative various with work.

Family Day, Sunday March 11

The Lucky Penny partners with The High Museum to present Family Day performances and workshops by dance artist Lilli Ransijn.

Sunday, March 11, 2012 | 12:00 to 5:00 pm

Family Day | The High Museum of Art

1280 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30309

Free for members

$18 adults | $11 children ages 6-17 | Free for children ages 5 and under

Consider purchasing a family membership. For $90, you receive 12 months of unlimited access to the museum for 1 to 2 adults plus your children or grandchildren.

LUCKY choreographer and dance educator, Lilli Ransijn will give performances at 2:30 and 3 pm, with short movement workshops at 3:30 and 4 pm. Embody the works of modern masters featured in the High’s current exhibit, Picasso to Warhol.

Welcome to Atlanta, Christi Denton and Danielle Ross

Christi Denton (Composer) is a Portland based sound installation artist who works with found sounds, electronics, and homemade instruments. Her works have been performed throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. Her music is included as part of "Six Seconds Around Me" in the CAM_Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Italy. She studied at the Centre de Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis in Paris and at Mills College in Oakland. In 2011, her work was performed in the Electrogals Festival, and her collaboration with Ross was shown in the Time Based Art Festival’s Ten Tiny Dances. Her laser MIDI controller was accepted into the 2012 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

Danielle Ross (Choreographer/Director) is a Portland bred and Bay Area trained dancer and choreographer. She is interested in how we perform for one another. Ross holds a BFA in Dance and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. In 2010, her work Make the Air Thick premiered at Launch Pad Gallery and her installation Home/Body was shown at Appendix Project Space. In 2011, she curated San Francisco’s Fact/SF into Performance Work’s Northwest’s Alembic Series. She has performed at TBA’s Ten Tiny Dances with Composer Christi Denton and with Zoe/Juniper for their 2011 installation at Lincoln Hall. She is currently dancing for Linda Austin, and her latest work To Remember Is To Jump Around There premiered at the Headwaters Theatre in January, 2012. She is also a founding member of FRONT, a Portland run publication dedicated to contemporary dance.

The Lucky Penny welcomes Christi Denton and Danielle Ross, who are in town for the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech. We will be presenting an intimate performance and artist talk with them on Thursday, 2/16.

Idea: Threshold

Idea Capital has awarded Lucky Duo, Blake Beckham and Malina Rodriguez, a grant to support the creation of their upcoming performance work, Threshold. Premiering in late summer, the piece is designed for a house constructed out of cardboard, and examines the home as both a sacred and profane space. The Lucky Penny is currently recruiting architects, designers, and artist volunteers. Contact blake@theluckypenny.org for more information.

11.11.11 Photography by Bobbi Jo Brooks