Colin Gee returns to the Whitney

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jajX4z-Op8A&feature=player_embedded

Trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris and Dell’Arte School of Physical Theater in California, Colin Gee creates original works for film, performance, and opera. He was a principal clown for Cirque du Soleil from 2001 to 2004 and was featured in Cirque du Soleil’s 2003 production for television, Solstrum. In 2008 Whitney Live commissioned him to create and perform Objective Suspense as part of the exhibition Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926–1933, (the piece was inspired by Calder’s Circus).

Frequently collaborating with sibling/composer Erin Gee, he provided a libretto for a short opera, SLEEP, composed by Erin, that premiered at the Zurich Opera House in 2009. The same year his essay on performance was published in the Austrian art journal, kursiv. In 2007, two screenplays, Across the Road and Lady Heard Voices were Official Selections for the Bare Bones International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, and his short film, Stardust, documenting the implosion of a Las Vegas hotel, premiered at a Brooklyn Arts Council film festival.

In 2005 Gee created the film/performance project, Dakota. Writing, directing, and performing the work, Colin shot Dakota as a film in 2005 with the collaboration of Las Vegas–based circus artists, and a staged excerpt, From Dakota, was developed with the support of the 92nd St. Y, Harkness Dance Center, and Diskurs’04 in Giesen, Germany. The piece was premiered at PS 122, played at Wexford Arts Center, Ireland, and 4020 Festival, Austria, and received the Best Male Performer award at the 2006 Dublin Fringe Festival. Other original film projects include the short Lady Heard Voices (2004) featuring Irene Hultman, shot in Adelsö, Sweden; and Hotel (2003), a docudrama on adolescent circus artists. Also in 2006, Portrait and Landscape premiered in New York at Dance Theater Workshop’s video/dance series Captured. Gee performed with the Irene Hultman Dance Company, 2000–2001, and was a member of The Flying Machine Theater Company, 1998–2001. This award-winning international ensemble was recognized as Best of the New York Fringe Festival in 1997, creating and touring original works including three Off Off Broadway premieres, as well as Petrushka at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Utopians, Archipelago, and The Escapist at Soho Rep and Galapagos Arts Space, where the company was in residence.

He has conducted workshops at Columbia University; Lincoln Center Directors Lab; London International School of Performing Arts; the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theater; Teatro San Gines; University of Arts and Communication, Santiago de Chile; University of Iowa; North Carolina School of the Arts; Diverseworks; Sushi Arts Space; University of California, San Diego; Televisa Studios, Mexico City; Mediated Bodies and Daghdha Dance Company, Limerick, Ireland.