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 Festival 2014
Fall 2014/Winter 2015
December 3
Movement Research Festival
Margaret Paek
December 8
Movement Research FALL 2008 Festival
Mårten Spångberg
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.
December 1
Workshop: Where Medicine and The Arts Meet
Laura Barnard Stelmok
Movement Research at Eden's Expressway, 10:00 am
New York, NY
$45
Laura will bring the "Song of the 13 Ghost Points" alive through instruction and a 6 hour treatment. Willing participants will be woven into this ancient choreography, where the dancer works inside of the shaping of the Tao. This Song, hidden within the Taoist tradition of medicine, responds to the deepest struggles that Life gives, sounding to patient and practitioner, artist and audience simultaneously, to vanquish the power of Ghosts, all that haunts and holds humans captive to Suffering. To cultivate and remember the mandate of physicians and artists. Remembering Art as a call to participate in the sacred dialogue of life. December 1, 2014 10am-4pm
December 2
Workshop: Alexander Tech. & ReWire/Dancing States
Nina Martin & Shelley Senter
Danspace Project , 10:00 am
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$25
Nina Martin and Shelley Senter collaborate to explore areas of common interests where two modalities dance together. Both the Alexander Technique and ReWire/Dancing States are predicated on the notion that the body is always organizing for action before consciousness, often in habitual ways. We wish to examine the body’s preconscious ability and desire for movement, observe what is happening in the moment (knowing we can’t observe everything), and appreciate the utility of the gap between knowing and unknowing and its application in an aesthetic practice. As members of the Lower Left Performance Collective, Shelley and Nina have been investigating the relationship between their somatic practices for several years. December 2, 2014 10am-1pm
December 2
Studies Project: FOR WHAT
Ursula Eagly
Morgan Bassichis, Justine Lynch, Melanie Maar, Clarinda Mac Low, Alta Starr and Marýa Wethers
Gibney Dance at 890 Broadway, 6:15 pm
890 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
FREE No advanced registration or reservation is necessa
What are we doing, and what are we doing it for? What does it mean to live/work as an artist at this current time, and how do we position our work in relation to everything else in our lives and our environment? In what way are our artistic practices necessary to a collective transformation of society? We see that many artists decide to be of service in some way to the culture and to others. We invited panelists who enjoy multi-faceted engagement with the cultural field, including healing elements, social justice aspects, performance activations, and various cultural considerations.
December 3
Workshop: Somatic Improvisation Scores
Live scores by Nina Martin, Jaime Ortega, RoseAnne Spradlin, Sarah White-Ayón
Danspace Project , 10:00 am
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$5 No advanced registration or reservation is necessary
PUBLIC EXPERIMENT / WORKSHOP WITH SOMATIC IMPROVISATION SCORES Sometimes when fully immersed in an internal activation, something breaks through and we find ourselves totally present in full awareness. In a body lives many modalities, and, in a modality perhaps there are many bodies — this event is an attempt to activate the body of a group, and the bodies in a group, with many modalities at once. Four teaching artists will offer scores to participants, using words, voice, images, hands-on work, movement, etc. Participants may weave amongst the teaching artists at their own will. We envision this as a fluid morphing experiment, and invite you to explore with us by offering, actualizing, and witnessing. December 3, 2014 10am-1pm
December 4
Performance: Life Practices
Sylvestre Akakpo-Adzaku (Kordkor Dance Company), Lacina Coulibaly & Kota Yamazaki, Collective Settlement
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 or $12 for Danspace Project Members
This opening night of performances at Danspace Project showcases works that develop when an artist's somatic practice and cultural context is fundamentally linked to their art-making. What happens when art and life are blurred, in this context of performance?
December 5
Performance: Setting the Scene
Malin Arnell with musician KOEFF and additional 12 guests
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 or $12 for Danspace Project Members
First, the non human: electricity. A tragedy of the commons, / arising only in the doing Affects create a field of force that does not tend to congeal into subjectivity. ; I equate affect with materiality, / Hungry for wildness, / is a two-way-street The intimacy between being and following: /called “clownish traitsâ€. ; I am always slightly surprised by what I do. / The melting of cause and effect, this includes (among others) efficiency, trajectory, and causality. But just what kind of activity is this? / A dynamics of spreading cracks An irrational love, / that is not the realization of a plan.
December 6
Performance: An Exploration in Naming
Collective Research
Danspace Project , 8:00 pm
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
$15 or $12 for Danspace Project Members
If the world began with words or the sounds of words like it is said in many cosmogonies across cultures — then, do the words we used use for our work create its realities? How do we navigate meanings and realities between life, research, process, practice, product and marketing from the point of view of artists, presenters, funders, audience, society, economics, politics and cultures at large? What are the agents that crystallise meanings and how are these meanings used to create values? And do these values represent our realities? This event tackles these questions as a way to address our experiences of these values. Collective Research Group participants include Massimilliano Balduzzi, Daria Faïn, Whitney V. Hunter, Tuomas Laitinen, Iki Nakagawa, Odeya Nini, Cassie Peterson, Chana Porter, Arturo Vidich… and more.
December 7
Sunday Process Lab
Athena Kokoronis, Athena Malloy and Kay Ottinger
The Divergents
Movement Research at Eden's Expressway, 5:00 pm
New York, NY
$5
Sunday Process Labs are a series of three-hour, low-cost sessions on Sunday evenings, providing an opportunity for a dynamic exchange amongst peers in a lab-type setting. This Sunday Process Lab will be led by Festival Divergents as they summarize their experiences of the festival.
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?
- * 2014 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- ** 2013 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- *** 2015 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence
- • MRX/Latvia
- † MRX/Sweden, in collaboration with Konstnärsnämnden/The International Dance Programme, Sweden
