The Indeterminacy Festival seeks dancers with a background in modern, contact improvisation and collaborative generation for the Festival's 2025 site-specific project Into the Charmed Churned Circle comissioned and staged at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center located on Staten Island June 8-14th 2025. Dancers will work with artistic director Stanzi Vaubel, co-composer Philippe Treuille, and choreographer Melanie Aceto. The selected ensemble will create a new choreographic work inspired by the setting of Snug Harbor.

Selected artists will receive a full scholarship and housing (if needed) to participate in a seven-day creative lab June 8th- 13th with choreographer Aceto leading to a performance on Saturday, June 14th. Under Aceto’s direction, dancers will co-create a new work for the Indeterminacy Festival’s “Into the Charmed Churned Circle” in collaboration with a sixty-person chamber orchestra and choir. 

ABOUT THE WORK

A multisensory performance project inspired by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Whale Songs at Snug Harbor, Staten Island, NY, June 8 - 14th 2025, Into the Charmed Churned Circle, brings together a powerful ensemble of over sixty musicians, vocalists and dancers to explore themes of survival, sound, and the human pursuit of fortune through the lens of maritime history. This project is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and will be premiered at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. 

Workshop Performance Schedule

June 8-13th  Creative Lab 10:00am - 4:00pm

June 13th     Rehearsal time TBD | Tech 5:30pm-9:00pm

June 14th     Tech 5:30pm | Performance 7:30pm-8:30pm | After Party 8:30pm 

Location: Snug Harbor Cultural Center: 1000 Richmond Ter, Staten Island, NY 10301

TO APPLY, PLEASE GO HERE
 

About the Festival

Founded in 2016 by Stanzi Vaubel, PhD, The Indeterminacy Festival is an annual site-specific event that merges professional and community artists in immersive, boundary-pushing performances. Each work is uniquely shaped by its location—whether a historic landmark, natural environment, or urban space—blurring the lines between music, movement, and storytelling. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, the festival reimagines how art engages communities and brings to life the unpredictable beauty of live performance.

About the Artists 

Stanzi Vaubel, PhD, (artistic director, co-composer) is the founder and artistic director of The Indeterminacy Festival, Vaubel's list of honors include a Fulbright Fellowship, NYSCA award for 2025, with invitations to perform at the Watermill Center, the Longhouse, Tanglewood Institute, and Carnegie Hall. Her festivals have been staged around North America and Europe with support from New York, Iowa, Nebraska, and Michigan arts councils. Vaubel studied at the Juilliard Pre-College, Northwestern University, and received her PhD while on fellowship from the University at Buffalo. As a radio producer Vaubel has created programs for the Whitney Museum, WNYC, BBC, and Chicago Public Radio. Vaubel is currently on faculty at the New York Arts Program.

Philippe Treuille (co-composer) attended The Juilliard School and Northwestern University. Treuille’s Requiem for choir and orchestra was premiered in 2015 by the SymphoNYChorus. His Missa de Aqua, a mass for Baptism, premiered in 2019 by the Long Island Choral Society and Orchestra. Treuille’s music has been performed nationally and internationally including the Rubin Museum, MoMA PS1, the French Consulate, Lincoln Center, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Château de Fontainebleau, the American Institute of Architects, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music and at the Tanglewood Institute. Treuille’s awards include a National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts Music Composition Merit Award. 

Melanie Aceto (choreographer) is a dancer, choreographer, educator and scholar. Her choreography has been performed in Toronto, Guatemala City, Bogotá, Jacob’s Pillow, numerous New York city venues and in major cities nationally. She regularly presents work in non-dance venues including silos, warehouses, moving barges, museums, parks and store front windows. In Buffalo her work has been presented at the AKG Art Museum and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. As an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, she teaches modern technique, improvisation, dance composition, yoga, social dance, and choreographs regularly for departmental concerts. Her publications offering models for teaching dance composition and modern technique appear in the journal Dance Education in Practice. She is certified in Pilates mat, is a Registered Yoga Teacher and an avid Latin dancer. www.melanieaceto.com