At the Adapted Aquatics buildings in Fort Tilden, Gateway National Park
September 18 & October 16, 2016 at 1pm and 4:30pm

Kinesis Project dance theatre, hosted by The Rockaway Artist Alliance and National Parks Service, presents a performance experience along the beach of Fort Tilden on September 18, 2016 and October 16, 2016 at 1pm and 4:30pm. Audiences will meet at Rockaway Artist Alliance Gallery to be brought to the performance, and should wear clothes for a fall day at the beach and shoes for walking. After the performance, audiences are welcome back to enjoy the art opening at the Rockaways Artist Alliance. A post show conversation with the artists will take place on October 16th after the 4:30pm performance. Tickets for Secrets and Seawalls are $25-$45 and are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/secrets-and-seawalls-in-the-rockaways-2016-tickets-27126669599.  

Transportation from NYC: Kinesis Project partners with NYC Beach Bus to easily bring our audiences to Ft. Tilden. The bus meets ticketed audience members near Atlantic Avenue and transports audiences - drinks and snacks available! Tickets for bus must be purchased ahead of time via the performance ticket link to board.  

Secrets and Seawalls is a dance in two acts. Inspired by storms and disruption, Melissa Riker and Kinesis Project dance theatre in collaboration with architect Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA, use methods of dance and architecture to explore vulnerability, power, and how each are revealed.  The work premiered along the beach at Fort Tilden in Gateway National Park, The Rockaways in 2015.  Melissa Riker and Lee Skolnick's collaboration, Secrets and Seawalls has spanned the interest of both dance media and architecture. 

"The partnership with architect Lee H. Skolnick is apparent as the audience is coaxed along the promenade by the dancers who, like mischievous water nymphs, lure you to a graffiti-strewn concrete carcass where they are perfectly framed; dip diving through the building's shell."
-The Dance Enthusiast

"The Kinesis Project dance troupe turned the Fort Tilden shoreline into an outdoor theatre...Using the expanse of the abandoned graffiti'ed buildings, the beach and ocean's edge as their performance space..."
-THE WAVE, Rockaway Beach, NY, November 20, 2015

Three years in the making, Secrets and Seawalls stems from the choreographer's questions about the integrity of NYC's seawalls and the impact of weather. Working in collaboration with architect Lee Skolnick, Riker and Skolnick use the lenses of their respective art forms to create a dance work that tracks vulnerability in ourselves and in structures. Choreography by Melissa Riker, in full collaboration with the dancers. Dancers: Cassandra Cotta, Zachary Denison, Michelle Amara Micca, Lonnie Stanton. Concept collaboration: Lee Skolnick, FAIA. Costumes by Asa Thornton.  Live Music by Katie Down, Helen Yee and Michael Evans.  

Melissa Riker is Artistic Director and Choreographer of Kinesis Project dance theatre, celebrating its 10th NYC Season in 2015. She is a New York City dancer and choreographer who emerged as a strong performance and creative voice as the NYC dance and circus worlds combined during the 90's. Riker's dances and aesthetic layer her training as a classical dancer, martial artist, theatre choreographer and aerial performer. She creates dances on site - and in context. 

Riker invents large-scale out-door performances and spontaneous moments of dance for individuals and corporate clients.

Audiences and critics have called Riker's work "a Marx Brothers' routine with soul," "A movable feast." And from The NY Times, her choreography is: "comically acrobatic, gracefully classical, visually arresting."

Since 2005 Kinesis Project's work has been experienced in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Vermont, Florida and in New York City at such venerable venues as Danspace Project, Judson Church, Joyce Soho, The Minskoff Theatre, The Cunningham Studio, West End Theatre and Dixon Place.  The company dances outside in sculpture gardens, universities, and annually since 2006 in Battery Park's Bosque Gardens and The Cloisters Lawn as well as hosting over 30 surprise performance all over New York City and the tri-state area as an element of the company's earned income and outreach programming with volunteer populated flashmobs. Residencies include: Earthdance 2006, Omi International Arts Center 2008, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center 2011, TheaterLab 2014, Adelphi University 2014. Ms. Riker is a 2016 CDI Residency Fellow, 2015 LMCC Community Arts Fund grantee and was commissioned by The Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a surprise large-scale work and performances of her work Secrets and Seawalls at Omi International Arts Center, Gateway National Park in partnership with Rockaways Artist Alliance. Ms. Riker has received commissions from Carson Fox and the Ephemeral Festival in 2013, 2014 and 2015 for large-scale outdoor events, NYU in 1998, for an outdoor work long before "flashmob" was coined, 2006 and 2008 grants from the Puffin Foundation for her work Community Movements, a dance work with community volunteers, Fellowships from the Dodge Foundation, Space Grant Residencies from 92nd St Y, The New 42nd St Studio, Gibney Dance Center, and The Joyce Theatre Foundation, and annual artistic merit grants from The Bowick Family Trust to support the continued work of Kinesis Project dance theatre.

Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA (collaborating architect) seeks to synthesize art, science, and architecture to create memorable and meaningful experiences. He unlocks each project's "motivating story" to inspire imagination, curiosity, and understanding. For over 35 years, Mr. Skolnick has passionately developed and pursued his philosophy of "design as interpretation," wherein he seeks to unearth the unique themes and compelling concepts which characterize each project, and to translate them into concrete expression. Breaking down the barriers between disciplines, Mr. Skolnick has created an extraordinary firm where more than 35 designers and educators work in close collaboration. By making a thorough exploration and translation of content the starting point for design, he has brought depth, authenticity, and vision to an enormous array of diverse projects around the world. His museum, cultural institution, and residential projects have been recognized as works of fresh innovation and inspiration. Mr. Skolnick has employed his integrated design philosophy on projects for such clients as the Aileron Center for Entrepreneurial Education in Dayton, OH; the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in New York, Muzeiko: The America for Bulgaria Children's Museum in Sofia, Bulgaria; the Paley Center for Media in New York and Los Angeles; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga, TN; the New-York Historical Society; the New York Hall of Science in Queens, NY; the Cooper Hewitt National Museum for Design in New York and the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, KY, among many others.

Mr. Skolnick also has served on the Boards of The Cooper Union, Longhouse Reserve, the Society for Environmental Graphic Design and the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of the National Association for Museum Exhibition (Exhibitionist). He has served on panels and juries for the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Institute of Architects. He is also a frequent lecturer, instructor, and author of scholarly papers and popular works, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, England. 

Since the 1980s, he has been awarded Architectural Digest's "AD100," Cooper Union's "Achievers Under 40," House & Garden's "Design Obsession," the Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement from The Cooper Union, "The Most Innovative" by The Best of the Best Luxury Homes magazine, "The Best of the Best" Home Book's House of the Year, and local, state and national AIA Honor Awards. In 2003, Mr. Skolnick was elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. In 2007, he coauthored the exceptional book What is Exhibition Design?; an unparalleled handbook that explores what constitutes successful design and clarifies the roles of the various disciplines involved in exhibition design while exploring how new technologies expand the possibilities for both form and function. In 2008, Architecture Omi, an ambitious new project in Columbia County, New York, named Mr. Skolnick as its first Chairman of the Board. Architecture Omi is part of Omi International Arts Center, a renowned not-for-profit art program that provides artist residency programs and outdoor exhibition spaces on its rural campus, where a collaborative environment flourishes between artists from multiple disciplines. Architecture Omi seeks to explore the myriad intersections of architecture, art, nature and human structure.