About
The Ugly Company
was formed in 2005 by Tennille Lambert and a group of collaborators in New York City as a medium to explore movement within structured choreographic frames. Original investigations analyzed choreography for the stage but since 2007, after a collaboration with filmmaker Hanon Rosenthal, Lambert's creative practices hybridized to create choreography for both live performance and film. Non-linear in its nature, though often shrouded with a narrative tone, The Ugly Company creates contemporary dance works that communicate ideas through unassuming sequences of action and fragmented dance vocabularies.
Tennille Lambert
was born in Birmingham, Alabama and spent her early years folk dancing at Arts & Crafts and County fairs. Sometime later she made her way to New York City, where she created work and taught for nine years. Recently her creative and teaching practices have "gone west" and she now splits her time between Los Angeles and New York City. Experiencing dance as theatre and theatre as movement, Tennille’s work grows from simple vocabulary choices that intrigue her in the dance making process - movements that open the eye to how truly non sequitur life is. Tennille’s current choreographic interests place importance on the individuality of the performers with whom she creates each work, synthesizing their experiences into compositions that hinge upon a found premise.
Perspectives on Teaching & Process
Technique
Phrased and improvisational, my classes are a fusion of the movement experiences I have had throughout my life. From my beginnings with folk and theatrical forms, athletics, to the traditional classical and modern techniques that I have practiced, my classes facilitate the examination of weight as it relates to control – or loss thereof, imagination and focus. Exacting, fun and often fast-paced, I aim to create an environment where the students are free to move as individuals – with gusto. Most importantly, my teaching aspires to encourage the student’s understanding of their uniquely imaginative instrument and it’s availability to the moment.
Choreography
Because my primary choreographic interests connect the accessibility of a given topic through unifying the mundane and the allusive, I attempt to contextualize both imagined and appropriated movement content with the substantive idea of each work. In the beginning, I look at themes that are arising in materials. At a certain point in the process I can see a “concept”, “topic”, or “perception” appear in the subjective palate. When this center has been found, I expose the identity of the work to differing points-of-view. Opposition may come from shifts of media, scale, tone or even movement language.
I observe the dance making process as an active lab of understanding, reflection and communication. Through a creative dialogue with the work itself and listening to the feedback that the process provides, meaning is located, dissected and finally detached from the details of the individual piece.
Gallery
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“Experiments w/ Air” – 2010, 5m - film |
“the juliets” – 2009, 18m 2009 Emerging Artist Residency through The Field NYC
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“Star” – 2007, 50m
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“lucky” – 2011 - work in progress
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“Velda’s Diary” – 2003, 7m |
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“Fragile Things in A Minor” – 2003, 12m
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Press & People
Lucky relied on strategies from absurdist theater and happenings, confident that two benches, eight women, one man, and a few dozen transparent balloons can be funny, tragic, and profound. - Marcia Siegel, The Boston Pheonix
Talk about innovation without pretension. In a good way – Danciti
Her structure is conventional and experimental at the same time. – Dara Milovanovic
Choreographer Tennille Lambert handled this somewhat depressing premise with wit, tenacity and charm in her work Star. - Carley Petesch, Brooklyn Rail
Cerebral without being intellectually pretentious – which sets Lambert’s work apart from many other choreographers - Lang Reynolds
The piece moved forward fluidly as dancers walked in and out of the stage area, moved in and around each other with such precision and casualness that the whole piece felt like a series of waves. - Carley Petesch, Brooklyn Rail
Contact
Schedule
Upcoming
Crash
commissioned by Avocado Dance Theatre
PERFORMANCES:
Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 8:00pm
Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 8:00pm
VENUE: Old Town Temecula Community Theater
Tickets: http://tickets.temeculatheater.org/eventperformances.asp?evt=593
SUMAC - Systems for Understanding Movement and Choreography
June 11-16, NYC
Past
March 1st-4th, 2012
West End Theater
263 West 86th St. (between Broadway and West End Avenue)
New York City, NY
Choreographers' Project Showcase
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, MA
7/30/11 @ 3:30PM
Shared program with Adele Myers, Kelley Donovan and Edisa Weeks
Choreographers' Project
Summer Stages Dance @ Concord Academy
July 10th - 30th
Concord, Massachusetts
http://www.summerstagesdance.org/programs/choreographers.html
Experiments w/ Air
Directed and Choreographed by Tennille Lambert
Camera and Editing by Hanon Rosenthal
Performed by Terence Duncan
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Dance on Camera Screening
February 12-13, 2011
Experiments w/ Air
Directed and Choreographed by Tennille Lambert
Camera and Editing by Hanon Rosenthal
Performed by Terence Duncan
2011 Dance on Camera Festival, produced by Dance Films Association
6th Avenue, between 29th and 30th Streets, NYC
1/4" Canyon Scale
performed by BARE Dance Company as a part of BARE Intensity
October 27th, 2010 - 7:30PM
42051 Main Street
Temecula, CA 92590
$10-$15
The BARE Intensity Residency is supported by INNERSTATE, a project of OCD Theater, and made possible through the generous support of the James Irvine Foundation
the juliets
2009 Emerging Artist Residency Showcase
DTW
219 W 19th Street, NYC
June 25th, 2009 @ 7:30PM
the better ME
December, 2008
217 E. 42nd Street, NYC
Star
October, 2007
The Merce Cunningham Dance Studio
55 Bethune Street New York, NY 10014
The Life of a Horse
DTW - Bessie Schonberg Lab for Choreographers
December, 2006
Fun In Parking Lots
Cool New York Dance Festival @ John Ryan Theater
March, 2006
Precious Little While
Galapagos Art Space - 2006 Dance on Camera Festival
January 2006