Time Lapse Dance continues its 20th Anniversary celebrations with the premiere of a new dance film short, Single Use, which explores plastic pollution and the nature of disposability. Single Use will premiere on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 7pm EDT and will be followed by a talkback. The film will be available to view at timelapsedance.com/events/tldat20/.

In Single Use, choreographer Jody Sperling dances on city streets in a costume fashioned from over 100 reclaimed plastic bags. Like a plastic monster, she romps and rolls on pavement transforming into natural-seeming forms. The piece is a mediation on the nature of disposability and resuscitation. Following the release, stay tuned for a conversation with choreographer Jody Sperling and Beyond Plastics Founder Judith Enck on the urgent problem of plastic pollution.

Biographies
Jody Sperling is dancer-choreographer from NYC and the Founder/Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance. She has created 45+ works including many furthering the legacy of modern dance pioneer Loie Fuller (1862-1928). Considered the preeminent Fuller stylist, Sperling has expanded the genre into the 21st century, deploying it in the context of contemporary and environmental performance forms. She was nominated for a 2017 World Choreography Award for her work on the French feature film "The Dancer" (premiere 2016 Cannes Film Festival) inspired by Fuller's life. Her work is also prominently featured in the forthcoming Fuller documentary "Obsessed with Light," directed by Sabine Krayenbuehl and Zeva Oelbaum. 

Years of working in Fuller's idiom, which involves kinesphere-expanding costumes, has influenced Sperling's awareness of the body's relationship with the larger environment. In 2014, she participated in a polar science mission to the Arctic as the first, and to date only, choreographer-in-residence aboard a US Coast Guard icebreaker. During the expedition, she danced on Arctic sea ice and made the short dance film Ice Floe, winner of a Creative Climate Award. Following that experience, Sperling has developed programs transporting the icescape to the stage and incorporating climate outreach. Current projects focus on creating visual-kinetic narratives merging choreography and climate science. 

Judith Enck (Environmental Policy Expert) founded Beyond Plastics in 2019 to end plastic pollution through education, advocacy, and institutional change. Passionate about protecting public health and the environment, she teaches classes on plastic pollution as a Senior Fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College, and was recently a Visiting Scholar at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Judith has held top influential positions in state and federal government. Appointed by President Obama, she served as the Regional Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, overseeing environmental protections in NY, NJ, eight Indian Nations, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands - in addition to managing a staff of 800 and a $700M budget. 

Previously, Judith served as Deputy Secretary for the Environment in the New York Governor's Office, and Policy Advisor to the New York State Attorney General. She was Senior Environmental Associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group, served as Executive Director for Environmental Advocates of New York and the Non-Profit Resource Center, and is a past President of Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Judith appears on a weekly public affairs radio show on a local NPR affiliate, the Roundtable on WAMC in Albany, NY. Judith lives in upstate New York with her husband, where they built their passive solar home with their own hands and with lots of support from friends and family.  She designed her town's rural recycling program. She is a proud parent and enjoys reading and following the news in her spare time. 

Time Lapse Dance (TLD), is an all-women 501(c)3 dance company founded by Jody Sperling in 2000. The company's mission is to forge dynamic connections between dance and movements in culture, history, science, the visual arts, and music. The work aims to investigate the relationship of the moving body to the world we inhabit through live performance, educational programs, and media production. TLD has two special priorities. First, cultivating climate literacy through the performance of new choreography (for stage, screen or street) that echoes the natural world, and the programming of outreach that merges concepts and communication strategies from scientific and artistic practices. Second, advancing the legacy of Loie Fuller by reimagining the art of performance technologist Loie Fuller (1862-1928) in an innovative and environmental context through the creation of new performance, media, research, and publications, that resonate with the 21st century public. Since inception, TLD has presented 16 seasons in Sperling's native NYC and toured to performing arts centers nationally and internationally. Along with performances, TLD offers outreach on arts/climate, family programs, workshops, and masterclasses. TLD has received commissions from Marlboro College/Vermont Performance Lab, University of Wyoming/NEA American Masterpieces, and the Streb Lab for Action Mechanics.

This program is supported, in part, with support from Dance/NYC's Covid Relief Fund.