The Gauntlet: Faraway Together - Sxip Shirey and Coco Karol

Biographies

Sxip Shirey is a composer/producer/director/performer based in New York City. He is the composer and MD for the theater/circus arts production “LIMBO” and “LIMBO UNHINGED”, developed by Melbourne based Strut N Fret Productions House. This brought him all over the world from The Sydney Opera House to the South Bank Center in London to leading the band at Madonna’s Birthday Party in the Hamptons. Shirey teaches workshops in “Text and Object Oriented Composition” at Norwegian Theater Academy, Fredrickstad, Norway, which Shirey considers to be “The Black Mountain College of NOW.” Shirey toured as the opening-act for the Dresden Dolls and has collaborated often with Amanda Palmer, and was a member of the band Luminescent Orchestrii. He has played Appalachian music for gypsies in Transylvania and gypsy music for Appalachians in West Virginia. Shirey has presented at TED (2008), is a 2011 United States Artist Fellow, and is currently an artist in residence at Brooklyn’s premier contemporary music venue, National Sawdust. He wrote music for the short film “Statuesque”, written and directed by Neil Gaiman, starring Bill Nighy, which premiered on Christmas Day on SKY TV, UK. He created music for the app-version of Shaun Tan’s book, “Rules of Summer,” NSW Lothian Children’s Books, 2013. Shirey has also served as artist curator in residence at National Sawdust, bringing in artists including Taylor Mac, Rhiannon Giddens, Ned Rothenberg, Baby Dee, Sarah Angliss, Theo Bleckmann, Todd Reynolds, Basil Twist, The Quintet of the Americas, and Lady Rizo. Shirey is currently working on an opera based on Winter Miller’s play “No One is Forgotten”, co-composed by Paola Prestini through HERE Arts Center, NYC, USA. He is also composing music for Lisa D’Amour’s play, Ocean Filibuster, which is developed through the American Repertory Theater Company, Boston, USA. Shirey is currently developing his immersive choral works, “The Gauntlet”, with his artist partner, Coco Karol, across the world.

Coco Karol, is a New York-based dancer, choreographer, and artist who makes cross-disciplinary performances that invite conversations between personal and shared experience. A hospice volunteer and dedicated teacher, Coco is interested in how we create meaning and connect to others. For her, dance joins poetic and physical experience. She holds a BFA from Tisch Dance, NYU, and an MFA from Hollins University. Among the choreographers she has danced for are Chris Elam/Misnomer Dance Theater, Cherylyn Lavagnino/ CLD, and Christopher Williams. Her choreography has been toured internationally and premiered in reputable New York venues such as Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Galapagos, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, and been curated by AUNTS. She has worked with musicians including Bjork, Amanda Palmer, Ryan Lott, Sugar Vendil, Minna Choi/ MagikMagik, Lacy Rose, Alaina Ferris, and Inhyun Kim/Ear to Mind; visual artists including Steven Sebring, Eve Bailey, Marcos Zotes, Benjamin Heller, and C. Finley. She teaches various dance and embodied inquiry techniques that she developed including Movement Before Dialogue workshops such as, Gestures of Care, a movement and storytelling series for end-of-life care professionals. Ongoing works include, ‘Movement Interviews’ (dance as inquiry), The Lullaby Project (oral histories/ physical archives), and The Gauntlet, community-inclusive choral performances with her artistic partner and husband, Sxip Shirey.