The Movement Research Festival finds its roots in the Improvisation Festival/New York (IF/NY), initiated in 1992 by Sondra Loring (a MR Artist-in-Residence at the time) and Julie Carr. In 1999 IF/NY became a programs of Movement Research, under the curation of Programming Director Amanda Loulaki. In 2004, Movement Research created an artist-curator format, and, beginning in 2006, Movement Research established the festival as a twice-annual event.
The Fall Festival is shaped by Movement Research's programming staff in collaboration with Festival Curators, who bring their own interests and ideas to specific festival events. The Spring Festival is produced by a group of artist-curators who determine the emphasis, shape, and programming. Together, these two approaches allow for a varied investigation and exploration into current artistic concerns and reflect Movement Research's mission of valuing artists, their creative process and their vital role within society.
Spring 2012
December 3
Movement Research Festival
Margaret Paek
December 8
Movement Research FALL 2008 Festival
MÃÂrten SpÃÂngberg
May 29
Notebook Exhibition and Opening Reception
The Center at West Park, 6:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
FREE
A diverse collection of notebooks, pages, epistles from the processes and reflections of choreographers, dancers and performers across a spectrum of approaches and forms. Join us for drinks and a viewing of the installation.
May 29
Performance Event
Miguel Gutierrez, Katy Pyle, and Bridget Everett & the Tender Moments
The Center at West Park, 8:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
Miguel Gutierrez: Superhump is a new, momentary piece by Miguel Gutierrez which has been performed a thousand times. Superhump is a celebration of the end of ideas and a post-conceptual world. Superhump says "It's raining, might as well smoke." Katy Pyle: The Firebird is a re-imagining of Stravinsky and Fokine's original ballet as a Ballez--a queered theatrical with non-heteronormative characters and partnering. A lesbian princess and a tranimal (part boy, part bird) encounter a dominating Sorceress and a garden of genderf***ing Princes on the road to their liberation. Bridget Everett & the Tender Moments: Bridget Everett is a singing tour de force known for her funny yet gut-wrenching, outrageous and unpredictable performance work. She and her band, The Tender Moments, look forward to spending an intimate evening with you. Anything can and will happen.
May 30
Body Language Reading and Performance
Hosted by Jamie Townsend
Andrew Blackley, C.A. Conrad, H.R. Hegnauer, Yvonne Meier, Eileen Myles, Kristen Prevallet
The Center at West Park, 7:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
READING: Not just about the words but the body delivering them. Language as it comes to bear on what we touch, feel, need, want, do. A poetry reading of self-help, translation, scores, somatics, and letters to absent others, hits you where you need it most. PERFORMANCE: ÃâÅ“Over the years I've developed this Improv. technique that I call Scores. At this point, the scores are elaborate, excessive, amusing and impossible.Ãâ (Yvonne Meier)
May 30
Performance Event: stillness-action-sweat-effort
Aretha Aoki, devynn emory, Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson
The Center at West Park, 10:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
A performance experiment where the duet is charged with the exploration of stillness, action, sweat and effort. Participants are chosen based on their choreographic approaches and aesthetic differences that touch these categories. Performances can be rehearsed, improvised, score-driven or otherwise. The collaboration can be collective, competitive, a battle, a fusion, or indeterminate.
May 31
Real. Good. Music. A concert. In the sanctuary.
Chris Forsyth, Tatsuya Nakatani, Mike Pride & Mick Barr, Jesske Hume & Ryan Ferreira
The Center at West Park, 7:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
May 31
Mixed Tape
Curated by niv Acosta
The Center at West Park, 10:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
Six performers hijack, change, distort or magnify a performance with ÃâÅ“that ubiquitous deus ex machina, the ironically intended pop song.Ãâ (BS)
June 1
Let's Talk About Sex
Moderated by Jillian Peña, Dean of the School of Sex Research at Movement Research and Erin Markey
Diana Cage, Aimee Herman, John Jasperse, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Antonio Ramos, Lucy Sexton
The Center at West Park, 6:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
Choreographers, erotica writers, and performance artists talk about doinÃââ it in the 21st Century.
June 1
Performance Event
Anna Azrieli, Neal Beasley, Justin Cabrillos, Carmine Covelli, Jesske Hume
The Center at West Park, 8:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
Anna Azrieli: Skirt Scrum Ideas about manners and society, Jane Austen and Jane Eyre. But when it comes down to it there is a big hoop skirt, a space, and a body finely flailing. Neal Beasley: kommun: a stud-ee Descriptions of everyday life frame an everyday body - an "everyman" body - looking at the poetics of the banal and for the release of fantasies desperately humming beneath the tasks of daily life. Another dance, another body, and a dream of an "other" place. The ordering and reordering of language and movement seeks to reveal or invite something larger than the artist's stale ideas of what is possible or appropriate. Justin Cabrillos: Troupe explores the relationship between the American showman P.T. Barnum and a host of animals and people he put on display including Jumbo the elephant, the Feejee Mermaid, and the ÃâÅ“Swedish Nightingale.Ãâ The movement, voice, and text integrate selections of his autobiography and the language of disciplinary techniques for children. Inspired by BarnumÃââs own mingling of different performance forms, this interdisciplinary solo brings together elements of the forms he popularized. Jesske Hume "A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one." -excerpt from Thirteen Ways of Looking at A Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens A dance to alter perceptions of the body, space, and time through both movement and stillness. Seeking limitations in order to push past them, the dancer is present and lives both in her body and in the space around it. Carmine Covelli: American Tantrums is a series of short installation art pieces. This marks the debut of Part 1 and will feature a small cast of un-recognizable faces simulating barely recognizable modern day tasks.
June 2
Central Park Sensory Walk
Led by Jennifer Monson
Central Park, 11:00 am
81st St. and Central Park West
New York, NY
FREE
Meet at the entrance on W. 81 St. & Central Park West. Runs from 11am-1pm
June 2
Child Support!
Hosted by Anna Sperber
Central Park, 2:00 pm
81st St. and Central Park West
New York, NY
FREE
A kid friendly hang-out pot-luck picnic. An opportunity for play between parents and non-parents alike! Bring snacks, games, blankets as well as questions and experiences of parenting in New York City. A space for dialogue and sharing resources. (2-4pm)
June 2
WHAT IS CONTEMPORARY DANCE & WHERE IS IT GOING?
Hosted by The BUREAU FOR THE FUTURE OF CHOREOGRAPHY
The Center at West Park, 3:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
FREE
3-6pm: Participate!, 6pm: Formal Presentation from The Bureau for the Future of Choreography This Studies Project is a project initiated by the Bureau for the Future of Choreography to map out a history of contemporary dance and choreography since Judson Church. Taking inspiration from the first director of MoMA, Alfred BarrÃââs infamous Flowchart of Modernism and various responses to his gesture, what might a flowchart for the past fifty years of experimental dance look like? Participants will be invited to create their own flowchart for the collection of the BFC, followed by a presentation by the Bureau at 6pm.
June 2
Performance Event
Tarek Halaby, Dynasty Handbag, and Adrienne Truscott
The Center at West Park, 8:00 pm
West Park Presbyterian Church
165 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
$5
Tarek Halaby: Performing for the first time Tarek Halaby is based in Brussels, Belgium. He has entered into a phase of generating new material. Working without the aim to produce a specific piece or performance, he has set up a series titled "Performing for the first time' which, in essence, is an experiment on how to produce work and a practice in performing. Anything from movement, to songs, texts, photographs and drawings are used as material and/or to generate material for each performance. Dynasty Handbag: Sounds Affectionate Dynasty Handbag tells a dismal story through spastic mime inversion and inaccurate sound collage. Adrienne Truscott: I DonÃâât Mean to Brag Adrienne Truscott's One-Lady Rape about Comedy starring Her Pussy and little else. (a werk-in-progress).
June 3
Ridin’ Dirty Wrap Up Party
Meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park
Grand Army Plaza, 12:00 pm
Meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park
Brooklyn, NY
FREE
Grab your gears, join the MR Rough Riders Rebecca Wender, Barbara Bryan, and Ian Douglas, and pedal down to Jacob Riis beach for the PUSH IT Wrap Up Party. Transportation and location information will be available on the website for non-riders. BYO helmet, for real, and Bon Voyage.
June 2
Spring Festival
Performances by Ellen Fisher, Sondra Loring and Pile of Shit: excrement from the festival activities, what remains, what smells and what evolves.
May 11
OPENING
Sunny Jain, Malcolm Low / Formal Structure, Okwui Okpokwasili, Patricia Noworol Dance Theater
May 12
Spring Festival: Placing Performance
Moderated by Sarah Maxfield
Panelists: AUNTS, Megan Bridge, and others.
Gibney Dance at 890 Broadway, 6:15 pm
890 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
What words do we use, arrange, invent, and discover to talk about the particular communicative power of performance work? How does geographic location and environment influence the creation, languaging, and understanding of dance and performance? How do digital/ virtual sites affect the consumption of dance as a living, complex, emotionally dense form? Join Sarah Maxfield, AUNTS, Megan Bridge, and the co-curators of the 2015 MR Spring Festival for an intimate conversation about locality, environmental and digital influence, and curatorial process. Part of Movement Research Festival Spring 2015: LEGIBLE/ILLEGIBLE.
May 14
Spring Festival: Freedom Station (Kid Friendly)
Prospect Park, 2:00 pm
Southern end of the long medow
Brooklyn, NY
The artist/parent: conundrum or harmony? Bring blankets, bring the little ones, take a break from the binaries to share conversation about finding balance in the roles of artist and parent, and more broadly about the integration of art and life practice...as we simply enjoy a day outside together with our kids! Part of Movement Research Festival Spring 2015: LEGIBLE/ILLEGIBLE.
November 30
FESTIVAL | a dialectic of dark and light
Opening night Movement Research Festival Fall 2015 featuring Jaamil Olawale Kosoko in collaboration with Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste
June 6
Movement Research at the Judson Church
Justin Cabrillos, Anna Carapetyan, Ayano Elson, Marguerite Hemmings, Michael Mahalchick, Sarah Maxfield, BASHIR DAVIID NAIM, Marissa Perel, Randy Reyes, Julia Santoli, Lily Bo Shapiro, Anna Adams Stark
June 7
Festival Studies Project: PASSAGE
Festival Curated by Aretha Aoki, Elliott Jenetopulos, Eleanor Smith and Tara Aisha Willis
Moderated by Risa Shoup with panelists Anna Carapetyan, devynn emory, Robert Kocik, and iele paloumpis.
Gibney Dance at 890 Broadway, 6:30 pm
890 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
This Studies Project will bring together dance artists who also work in the field of care-giving: end-of-life, beginning-of-life, navigators of illness and wellness. Why do many dancers become doulas? What is the overlap between guiding bodies through the cycles of life, and guiding bodies through space? What is it that draws dance artists to this profession? How do we acknowledge the specific needs of different communities and that all care is not equal/universal?
- * 2011 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- ** 2010 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- *** in collaboration with Austrian Cultural Forum New York
- • Provided through the generous support of the Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College
