This is the beginning of a series about knowledge in dance, led by Karen Ivy and Colleen Leonardi.

Karen Ivy: I have some questions about dance and choreography that I’m hoping the two of us can refine, challenge, and manipulate in some way that is interesting to us. I think ideally, we’ll end up with fewer questions rather than more, which is the opposite direction that you and I usually go in.  [Lots of laughter] As you know, one of the things that I’ve been thinking about as I’ve come into contact with analytic philosophy and other fields that relate to choreography [via emergence, complexity, and information systems], is the question of whether we can gain some kind of empirical ground about what kind of knowledge is in dance and/or choreography.

What Sustains You? is a new video project that asks dance artists about money and sustainability. The idea sprung from several events, discussions and proposals addressing in one way or another a necessity to rethink the presenting and creating models. Some of these projects were Charlotte Gibbons' 4U, Daria Faïn/Prosodic Body's think tank on the creation of a Commons (both an artistic performance and a civil/justice-building project) and Justine Lynch's Somatic Alchemy classes. These artists, it seemed to us, challenged traditional exchange contracts of art giving and receiving and blurred definitions of art, production, collaboration, healing, authorship, and more.

by Ann Moradian

by Janet Werther

A series of short video interviews, Notes on Prisma tries to sketch the experience of the Prisma Forum in Mexico at the end of June and beginning of July 2009 for those who were not there (which includes me). Immediately having access only to participating artists who are in New York, I'm learning about the event as I go from one conversation to another. Different artists, invited in different capacities and engaged in different ways talk about what they did, what impact the experience has had on them and what they think Prisma adds to the current practices of production and distribution of work, as well as the discourse and modes of collaboration that were been explored.