Nic Gareiss dances with Pride at ArtRat
Nic Gareiss participated in the ArtPrize 2022 performance at ArtRat Gallery that inspired the Americana Sundays series curated by the Stableford Agency. Sunday, June 21, ArtRat Gallery presents Americana Sunday: An Afternoon With Nic Gareiss. He also graced Americana Sundays with a solo performance during ArtPrize 2023.
Nic returns to ArtRat this Sunday, June 21, from 3-5pm at 46 Division Ave. S in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids. (Admission starts at $15 depending on your ability to pay; tickets available from Eventbrite.)
Ahead of the show, ArtRat checked in with Nic about his current projects and plans.
One of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch,” Nic Gareiss (he/they) is swiftly becoming recognized for his singular voice in the realm of dance, music and the traditional arts. This mix of movement, instrumental melodies, and traditional songs from rural places has become the heart of Nic's creative work.
Informed by 25 years of ethnographic study and performance, Gareiss’ work draws from many percussive dance practices to weave together a technique facilitating his love of improvisation; clog, flatfoot and step-dance vocabulary; and musical collaboration.
It’s been a grip since we’ve seen you at ArtRat! What have you been up to recently?
It’s been an incredibly busy few years with lots of performances (nationally and internationally!) and new artistic projects including a commission from MassMoCA with banjoist Allison de Groot, a sold-out performance at Carnegie with Martin Hayes & Sam Amidon, touring with Jake Blount, presenting a duo show with Quebecois fiddler Alexis Chartrand at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club (we even got a NYT review!) and the launch of my new solo queer folk song project dappled gray! Between it all, I'm still loving living in Lansing, making cocktails at home, and reading whatever queer theory I can get my hands on!
In addition to your solo work, you recently teamed with Caleb Teicher for a performance at Jacob’s Pillow in Western Massachusetts. What was it like to collaborate on this project?
Collaborating with Caleb is a dream! And bringing our duo show to Jacob's Pillow felt incredibly special because, while the Pillow is a National Historic Landmark for dance, rural percussive movement forms like Appalachian flatfooting and dancing from rural Ireland haven't had a platform (literally or figuratively) there.
It meant a lot to be able to share my encounter with those practices with the audiences during our four shows in their newly renovated Doris Duke Theatre for their first ever autumn performance!
An important throughline of your career has been challenging heteronormative tropes in traditional dance. How does that inform your performance?
The best pickup line I ever got was from a boy at the Detroit Queer Square Dance (shoutout to the Detroit Folk School which presents these great events!) He sidled up to me in a pair of cutoff jean shorts and asked, "Do you think folk dance can exist without nationalism?" (I was immediately hooked!)
Traditional dance has often been called into service to represent a people, a place, a time, a culture. In the politics of that representation, often the presence of queer people is erased. But we have been here flatfooting, step dancing, singing ballads, playing fiddle and banjo all along, even if we haven't been allowed to have been visible. I'm interested in performing folk forms with 2SLGBTQIA+ stories re-inserted, whether by excavation or creative fabulation!
What can the audience expect from your Americana Sundays appearance?
Expect an afternoon acoustic matinee that blurs the boundaries between music and movement, with percussive dance pieces, flatfooting, step dancing, singing, speaking, and some new solos I've been working on as part of an upcoming performance at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland at the end of the month!
Expect a celebration of queer voices in traditional arts. Expect texture, sibilance, sonority. Expect to go woo!!