Critical Correspondence
Somatic Poetry
by Clarinda Mac Low The experience of the experience. Is there a way to talk and write about performance that mirrors the experience of the experience? Rather than a value judgment or a critical analysis, can we share a sense of our inner reaction? I am partial to clarity and standard structure and prose exposition, […]
MR Festival 2008: I archive, you archive, we archive. by Ana Isabel Keilson
by Ana Isabel Keilson MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There Some thoughts on how we can rethink what it means to archive and document our work and our community: 1. The film screening last Tuesday was something of a family reunion, a picnic in the dark, a giant sprawling meal of associative chains—the people, […]
MR Festival 2008: Said/Unsaid by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
by Eva Yaa Asantewaa MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There I left close to 4pm. So, I’m not sure if Saturday’s circle in dialogue at Judson ever got around to directly addressing moderator Rebecca Lazier’s opening topic–“What is an ideal institution?”–or its eventual offshoot, “What are some new models for working together?” Those questions […]
MR Festival 2008: 24x4x4—48 (or so) hours later
by Megan Nicely MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There The questions began to flood in during the last piece: How can groups of people enter into the same dream (or was this only a 60s phenomena)? Can dream logic be adopted and furthered outside of the initial container? Are dreamers self-involved or merely communicating […]
MR Festival 2008: 24 x 4 x 4 by 1
by Eva Yaa Asantewaa MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There This morning, from my friend Serge in Paree, I receive the following wonderful explanation: “Esprit d’escalier (meaning: what comes up in your mind (when you leave where you’ve been) while you’re going down the stairs–what you should’ve said, I have those alot, I try […]
MR Festival 2008: The 80’s and 90’s On Screen – Dance Relics by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
by Eva Yaa Asantewaa MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There Judson Church’s gym. Engulfed by this metallic, swarming roar with an uncanny, regular pulse. Maybe a hundred dancers talking all at once over loud music. Clothing and skin no match for this energy. Indestructible and frightening. Voices pitched through instruments of exploration and whimsy […]
MR Festival 2008: Dance for Music: Five Leading Run-on Questions About Music for Dance
by Chris Peck MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There I’ve been attending contemporary dance performances and collaborating with choreographers as a composer for nearly ten years now, and I have many questions about music for dance. One big one that usually isn’t spoken aloud until the second or third beer after the show is […]
Performing Citizenship
by Clarinda Mac Low A few weeks ago it dawned on me just how profoundly alienated I was from the government of the United States, the nation of which I am a citizen. This feeling has been with me for years, and hardly at the back of my mind, but at that moment it struck […]
MR Festival 2008: Transversality Lab: An Austrian/NYC Exchange
by Jenn Joy MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There The Transversality Lab will take place on Monday, June 2nd, during the Movement Research Spring Festival 2008: Somewhere Out There. It is a collaboration between ACFNY, Tanzquartier Wien, the Austrian Ministry for Education, the Arts, and Culture, and Movement Research. Artists and theorists from Austria […]
MR Festival 2008: Somewhere Out There – MR Spring Festival 2008
Monday, May 26 – Sunday, June 8, 2008 movement research spring festival 2008: Somewhere Out There Two weeks of performances, excursions, and experiences in, around, and away from Judson Memorial Church printed brochure, suitable for framing, now available at your favorite local hangouts We are scheming to attract maximum density of performance energy to Judson […]
Laughter (revised)
by Clarinda Mac Low “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”* When humor comes up in a performance, a momentary transformation takes place, an alchemy of opening. Suddenly the space between performer and audience, between audience members, narrows or disappears. We share the laugh and so share an understanding. “There can never be enough […]
Feeling Space Part II
by Clarinda Mac Low Today, we wander. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher from the early twentieth century, wrote a series of “Remarks on Colour,” some of his last writings before death. In these fragments of text, he engages in a deep questioning of color perception, seeing it as a language game, as somewhere between logic […]
Feeling Space
by Clarinda Mac Low Last Sunday I was eating Thai food with my friend James when, suddenly, I lost my sense of spatial perception. Everything in front of me looked flat and stubbornly two-dimensional, yet animated and very colorful, like a picture on a video or computer monitor. I grasped my plate, I felt the […]
Creating an Atmosphere
by Clarinda Mac Low A hill, a lot of barking dogs, a funeral home, a chilly little hut, a modern rickshaw. How do you set a scene? A select group of people, a secret instruction, a cinematic purview in Prospect Park. What exactly is happening? Do I care? In performance the what is often subsumed […]
