iLAB Collaborative Residency
A project of iLAND, iLAB is a collaborative residency program between movement based artists and scientists, environmentalists, urban designers/landscape architects, architects and others that will integrate creative practice within the different fields/disciplines. Choreographer Hope Mohr and Composer and Acoustic Ecologist Michelle Nagai have been selected for the first iLAB residency to be held from September 11 – 23, 2006 in NYC.
The residency, titled The Language of the Listening Body will investigate an active listening and moving practice within the urban soundscape. The public is invited to participate in soundwalks on Saturday, September 16, 2006 in the Times Square area and Saturday, September 23, 2006 in Long Island City. The walks will be held rain or shine and are appropriate for all ages.
The residency with Mohr and Nagai will facilitate an intensive investigation of listening and moving in the urban soundscape through a two-week studio process with a core group of invited dance artists as collaborator-participants. The primary goal of the residency is to support an active, physical experience of the urban soundscape among participants and the general public. From their respective disciplines of dance and sound, collaborators Mohr and Nagai will investigate a collaborative process that integrates auditory and kinetic awareness practices as the basis for experiencing the urban environment. They will also develop a movement language that aims to communicate the participants’ complex experience of listening while moving. The residency will investigate how listening and moving interact and transform each other in distinctly different acoustic environments in New York City.
The public is invited to participate in the process through the soundwalks on Saturday, September 16, 2006 and Saturday, September 23, 2006. In these soundwalks, dancers participating in the studio process will interact directly with non-trained movers and listeners from the general public. Dance participants will share aspects of the listening-based movement languages developed during the week, and the general public will be invited to join dancers in “performing” this vocabulary during the soundwalk.
A number of noteworthy special guests will participate in the residency, including Deep Listening founder Pauline Oliveros and Barbara Dilley, originator of the practice of Contemplative Movement. Several specialists in the environmental field will serve as consultants including Arline Bronzaft (Mayor’s Council on the Environment, Noise Commission); E.J. McAdams (NYC Audubon); and Eric Sanderson (Manahatta Project).
For more information about iLAB and iLAND, please visit iLAND
The Language of the Listening Body participants:
Lead Artists: Hope Mohr and Michelle Nagai
Dancers: Biba Bell, Lise Brenner, Robbie Cook, Laura Hymers, Alejandra Martorell, Yves Musard, Rebecca Wender and other to be announced.
Bios:
Hope Mohr has had an extensive performance career in the dance companies of Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Douglas Dunn and others. An emerging choreographer, Mohr is currently working as a Guest Artist at Stanford University. She has taught movement to professionals, adults and children in many contexts, including London School of Contemporary Dance, P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, the ODC School, and the Trisha Brown Studio. In addition to her dance career, Mohr has a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a longstanding commitment to environmental and social justice work.
Composer and acoustic ecologist Michelle Nagai has been organizing and leading soundwalks for family, friends and the general public since 2001. She is one of the founders of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology and an active participant in NYC’s sound-ecology-noise awareness community. In 2005, Nagai received a teaching certificate in Deep Listening from the Deep Listening Institute. Her solo work has been presented throughout the US, Canada and Europe and has been supported by the American Composers Forum, Harvestworks, the Jerome and McKnight Foundations, Meet the Composer and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
