NEWS

2019

Oba Qween design team wins Bessie Award

October 14, 2019 – At the NY Dance and Performance Awards, the Bessies, New York City’s premier dance awards, the outstanding visual design award went to the design team for Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson:

 Jeanne Medina and Ni’Ja Whitson (Costumes), Gil Sperling featuring artworks by Wangechi Mutu and Gavin Jantjes (Video), Tuçe Yasak (Lighting).

From the Bessie committee:
“For its innovative use of projection and light, using ceiling, wall, floor, audience, and dancers’ bodies as vessel and canvas. For mixing live performance, recorded and live video, and shape-shifting costumes to create a world of beauty, power, myth, and reality.”

Bessie Award nomination

Gil Sperling received a nomination for the New York Dance and Performance Awards / The Bessies in the category of outstanding visual design, as part of the design team for Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson. The awards ceremony will be held on October 14, 2019.

From the Bessies website:

Outstanding Visual Design:

Design Team: Tei Blow, Sean McElroy, Eben Hoffer, and Hyung Seok Jeon
for The Art of Luv (Part 6): Awesome Grotto! by Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (ROKE)
Abrons Arts Center 

Design Team: Jeanne Medina and Ni’Ja Whitson (Costumes), Gil Sperling, featuring art works by Wangech Mutu and Galvin Jantejes (Video), and Tuçe Yasak (Lighting)
for Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni’Ja Whitson
Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center

Mirella Weingarten (Set Design)
for Xenos by Akram Khan
Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival at Rose Theater

2018

Hadar Ahuvia nominated for Bessie award

Choreographer Hadar Ahuvia is a nominee for outstanding “breakout” choreographer at the 34th annual NY dance and performance Bessie Awards. Hadar’s piece “Everything you have is yours” was performed in 2018 at the 14th Street Y, with Gil Sperling as video designer.

2017

LABA Fellowship and upcoming performance

Gil Sperling is a LABA fellow for the 2016-17 season. LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture is a program of the 14th Street Y that uses classic Jewish texts to inspire the creation of art, dialogue and study.
Gil will be developing a new multimedia opera project titled ‘A yiddishe Wagner”.
A work in progress presentation is scheduled as part of the LABALIVE series February 9, 2017.
http://www.labajournal.com/2016/10/meet-fellow-gil-sperling/

Upcoming workshop at Gibney Dance

Gil Sperling will be leading a workshop on the use of alternative projection surfaces as part of the Gibney Dance Digital Technology Initiative. The workshop will cover Gil’s work and  examples from the field of multimedia performance and offer participants to experiment with the technology hands-on. Date: January 14 2017.
https://gibneydance.org/center/digital-technology-initiative/

2016

NY IT Award Nomination

Gil Sperling was nominated for the New York Innovative Theater 2016 Awards in the category of innovative design, for his video design on City of Glass.
http://nyitawards.blogspot.com/2016/09/city-of-glass.html

2014

Uriel Acosta praised by critics 

“Sometimes they speak in Yiddish, with supertitles that are projected onto the most unlikely places, including the actors’ torsos and columns of what looks like smoke. That’s right, I said smoke, out of which old photographic portraits materialize as well. And did I mention those fish that magically swim across the pages of open manuscripts? (Gil Sperling is the video designer.)”
“… That smoke effect I mentioned earlier? It’s the perfect metaphor for the ineffable, of-the-moment chemistry of live bodies watching live theater, now and in the distant then so lovingly conjured by this troupe.”
(Ben Brantley, The New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/theater/uriel-acosta-i-want-that-man-recalls-a-jewish-freethinker.html

2012

Shulamit at the TMT Lab

Gil Sperling has been named as lead artist in Target Margin Theater’s upcoming yiddish lab, and will be directing a multimedia production of Shulamit, an Operetta by Abraham Goldfaden.
Showtimes: November 2, 2012 at 10pm and November 3, 2012 at 10pm
at The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211
www.targetmargin.org

Projection Design Award

Gil Sperling’s video design for “Trafficked” by Project Girl Performance Collective has won the award for outstanding use of projections at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity awards ceremony, July 29, 2012.

SVA Summer Residency

A residency at the School of Visual Arts’ Program for Sculpture, Installation and New Media has resulted in a new series of video installations, based on medieval depictions of the demonic.