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.
Fall 2015 / Winter 2016
December 3
Movement Research Festival
Margaret Paek
December 8
Movement Research FALL 2008 Festival
MÄrten SpÄngberg
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
December 3
FESTIVAL | Nelisiwe Xaba
Nelisiwe Xaba
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 general / $12 Danspace Project Members
Xaba is a contemporary South African artist whose dancing narrates the political, racial and sexual movement through which South African female bodies have been choreographed since colonial times. - Annalisa Piccirillo Born in Soweto and based in Johannesburg, the celebrated contemporary choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba will present an evening of solo work, reimagined for Danspace Churchâs historic performance site.
December 4
FESTIVAL | Abby Zbikowski & Gwen Welliver
Abby Zbikowski & Gwen Welliver
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 general / $12 Danspace Project Members
What can be transmitted through motion, through the material of the body? What is kinetic imagination? How can the body suggest meaning beyond abstraction? Gwen Welliver - What a Horse! Welliver continues to embrace both formalism and fantasy in her work, What a Horse! Inspired by artist Paul Kleeâs image of the same name (Was Fur ein Pferd!, 1929), Welliver and her collaborators lift the image from the page into the dimensions of dance, with all the real and imaginary states that this implies. Abby Zbikowski - double nickels on a dime double nickels on the dime exists in a space that questions the vast playing field of contemporary dance and aggressively asks, âœHow can it be leveled to speak to multiple populations simultaneously and where do these accompanying aesthetics have the right to be seen?â Its highly physical and driving movement vocabulary is fueled by the energy and ethos of punk and hip-hop. Dancers fully commit their bodies and minds as they work through overcoming the odds of physical failure and self-doubt to discover ways of moving and being in the world that transcend the expectations that surround the dancing body.
December 5
FESTIVAL | Impossible Dances: Past and Future
Featuring Melinda Ring and Kai Kleinbard
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 general / $12 Danspace Project Members
Where idea and actuality collide. Where the past and future join forces. - Melinda Ring This evening of performance will entangle two different Festival proposals posed to artist Melinda Ring that resurface past work of hers through a reconstruction and construction in-progress. Proposal #1 asks Melinda to gift her 1999 Impossible Dance #2 (still life) to an emerging dance artist, Kai Kleinbard. Proposal #2 is for Melinda to revisit Impossible Dance #2, through the assembling of its original set design and to use this historical site for her current choreographic investigations with performers Talya Epstein, Maggie Jones, and Molly Lieber.
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?
- * 2015 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- ** 2014 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- *** 2016 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- • MRX/Sweden in collaboration with KonstnĂ€rsnĂ€mnden/The International Dance Programme, Sweden
- † Workshop Presentation
