Movement Research

Performing the Changing CityOrganized by Abigail Levine and Paloma McGregorWith panelists luciana achugar, Randy Martin, Jenny Romaine, and Niegel SmithHemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, March 19, 2013.

"...careening astronauts and bank clerks glancing at the clock before lunch; actresses cowling at light-ringed mirrors and freight elevator operators grinding a thumbful of grease on a steel handle: student riots; that dark women in bodegas shook their heads last week because in six months prices have risen outlandishly; how coffee tastes after you've held it in your mouth, cold, a whole minute." --Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

Hurricanes, transit strikes, planned and unplanned explosions, occupations... Bike lanes, bus lanes, protest pens, command centers... Pedestrian zones, redevelopment zones, disaster zones... How is the landscape of our city changing and what are the possibilities for creative response? Looking at the shifting social, economic, and literal topography of our city through the frame of transformative events and policy decisions, we ask the question: what is the role of artists, activists, and all citizens in conceiving, creating, and defending (a notion of) public space? And conversely, what is the role of public space as a partner in creative expression and action? luciana achugar, Randy Martin, Jenny Romaine, and Niegel Smith reflect on our shifting urban landscape and offer opportunities to imagine how we might enact our city in the future.

Dramaturgy as Practice/Dramaturgy in Practice
Conceived by Amanda Loulaki and Susan Mar Landau

Center for Performance Research, May 5, 2013.

A roundtable discussion with Thomas F. DeFrantz, Susan Mar Landau, André Lepecki and Katherine Profeta. The dramaturg as an active participant in the conceiving and making of movement based works is a relatively new and evolving phenomenon, as well as one that can be both mysterious and suspect. Conceived as a two-part event, Dramaturgy as Practice/Dramaturgy in Practice will explore both the ontology and the workings of dance dramaturgy today. Precluded by a short history of the topic, the first event will bring together a diverse group of working dramaturges to discuss their experiences and the possible implications of their role in the choreographic process. The second event, to take place in the fall, will open the conversation to include choreographers in an in depth discussion on the practice of dramaturgy.

"Overlapping Circles"

A conversation with Nancy Stark Smith, K.J. Holmes, Jennifer Monson and Jen Rosenblit

Gibney Dance Center, Mar 11, 2013.

Improvisation as a practice, and particularly the rich history of CI, has spread throughout the world in various permutations and with multiple offshoots, evolutions, hybrids, specializations, etc. With improvisation in some form or another as a now ubiquitous presence in much of contemporary dance, how are people grappling with the various practices of improvisation in the context of contemporary performance? How do we situate our dancing in the larger world? Is it performance? Practice? Who is it for and how does it serve and/or inspire us and others? What tools and materials are we using — and toward what ends?

"Let Me In Let Me In Or I'll Blow This House Down"

Moderated by Juliette Mapp and Jen Rosenblit

Laurie Berg and Liliana Dirks-Goodman (AUNTS), Rebecca Brooks, Barbara Bryan, Matthew Lyons (The Kitchen), and Ben Pryor (American Realness).

December 3, 2012, Jimmy’s no. 43.

Curators on Process and the Matter of Inclusion. To feel a part of something. Communal, to have community. To be asked, invited in, to ask to be invited in. Access, entry. While the role of curator and the process of curation holds as much artistry as the making of dance and performance, we hone in on an equally important need for a touch of transparency surrounding the presentation of dance and the body. What issues and concerns arise inside of a shifting community where representation is crucial for belonging and sustainable support? What are we doing to reach out to more artists? Where are those artists? Who are those artists? What are the complexities that arise while supporting the sustainability of an artist? What responsibility do we have to an idea of cultivating and supporting "newness?” Where is the body inside all of this? How do we digest being on the inside or outside of something spiritually, aesthetically, emotionally and academically?

Movement Research in Residence at the New Museum: Final Presentations for Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater 50 Years Later.

December 16, 2012 at the New Museum. 

On September 16, Movement Research (MR) solicited questions from the greater MR community with regards to the imprint that Judson Dance Theater (1962--64) continues to make on contemporary performance. Four questions were selected by attendees as focus topics for further investigation by artists nominated to lead a series of week-long performance laboratories and open rehearsals at the New Museum. Tonight, those artists share the results of their investigations for further consideration in an evening filled with performance, experimentation, and lively debate.

Movement Research Annual Town Hall Meeting

Monday, November 5, 2012
Joyce Soho
155 Mercer St.
New York, NY

Introduction by Kathy Westwater 
Moderated by Dana Whitco
Speakers: Jen Abrams, Ilona Bito, Daria Fain, Jill Sigman, Enrico Wey

This is a recording from the third annual Movement Research Town Hall Meeting, hosted by the Movement Research Artist Advisory Council.

This year, living in the worst economic environment of most of our lifetimes, we ask ourselves: How does the current climate affect our lives and artistic work, and vice versa? What creative insights and understandings, structures and alternatives, have manifest during this time of financial challenge? We gathered to share and articulate our perspectives and personal experiences through the recession and saw that they can have material, theoretical and practical repercussions within our community and beyond.

Also, check out a great synopsis and analysis of the meeting by Eva Yaa Asantewaa on Infinite Body: http://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-do-we-value-dance-and-dancers.html

Movement Research in Residence at the New Museum:

Proposals for Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later

September 16, 2012, at the New Museum

This event was moderated by Carla Peterson

Prior to tonight's program, Movement Research (MR) solicited questions from the greater MR community regardign the imprint that Judson Dance Theater (1962-1964) continues to make on contemporary performance. These questions were shared with the audience, debated, discusssed, and voted upon. Ultimately, four questions were selected by attendees as focus topics for further investigation by artists nominated to lead a series of week-long performance laboratories and open rehearsals at the New Museum. This event was presented as part of "Movement Research in Residence at the New Museum: Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later."

MR in Residence at the New Museum
Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later

A Pluralistic View of the Judson Dance Theater Legacy: 
Yvonne Rainer & Aileen Passloff with Wendy Perron

Through a series of discussions, presentations, artist residencies, and town hall meetings, Movement Research reconsiders the legacy, mythology, and permutations of influence that continue to echo from the occasion of Judson Dance Theater (1962-64).

The divergences between the work of Yvonne Rainer and Aileen Passloff highlight the vastness of the imprint of Judson Dance Theater (1962-64; JDT) while dismantling the myth of a singular Judson aesthetic. Rainer, along with dance artists Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, David Gordon, and others, broke with the conventions of modern dance by exploring task dances and the Dadaist idea of radical juxtaposition. Passloff, along with Jimmy Waring, Fred Herko, Arlene Rothlein, and others, reveled in the full-out dancing and whimsy of modern dance. In this talk, moderated by Wendy Perron, Rainer and Passloff consider the legacy of Judson Dance Theater from the perspectives of their divergent practices.

Some questions that Rainer and Passloff addressed: What were you saying "No" to, and what were you saying "Yes" to? In what ways did the '60s affect Judson Dance Theater? How did others in the JDT collective influence your work? What artistic values do you feel JDT has handed down to later generations?

This event took place on October 28, 2012 as part of New Museum’s RE:NEW RE:PLAY residency series, co-presented with Movement Research. The RE:NEW RE:PLAY residency series is curated by Travis Chamberlain, Public Programs Coordinator at the New Museum.

Photo: Yvonne Rainer, Wendy Perron, and Aileen Passloff, by Travis Chamberlain

Schneemann, Perel, 7.06.12

This is a Movement Research Studies Project titled “Dance and the Occupy Movement,” organized by Abigail Levine. Panelists included Barbara Browning, Paloma McGregor, Clarinda MacLow, Edisa Weeks, and Daniel Lang-Levitsky. This event took place at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, January 25, 2012.

An excerpt from the Movement Research Festival Spring Brochure 2011 reads: “Exploring an expanded notion of choreography and how it is related to our social and political organization and discovery of ourselves as individuals working within a temporary collective… circling and questioning around ideas of a moving community.”

The New York City General Assembly Declaration of the Occupation reads, “Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.”

Participants in this Movement Research Studies Project on the topic of dance and Occupy Wall Street discussed several questions in an open conversation about the creative political movement. What are the points of contact between experimental, contemporary dance and the Occupy Movement? As spatial and embodied practice? As social investigation and organization? As improvisation and movement? As agents of change? How do and might these moving communities interact? How do we approach (public and private) space in New York City?

Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community.