We are Building a New Home!
For 40 years MR was without its own home—rarely having both office and studio space in the same building, with dancers committedly criss-crossing lower Manhattan for classes & workshops, rehearsal space, and all MR events. Finally, in January 2019, MR moved into 122 Cultural Center at 150 First Avenue, our first long-term home dedicated and committed to supporting movement-based experimental artists. Now, Movement Research is in the final phase of building and making a permanent home for experimental dancers in New York City at 122 Cultural Center.
While we look forward to a new future for Movement Research within our permanent home, we are taking a dive into our history and remembering each space we’ve danced, gathered, worked, and held space in since our collective founding in 1978! Each week, we will look back at a different era of the organization. This week we kick off with MR’s first five years, 1978-1983!
In 1978, The School for Movement Research & Construction was founded with a collective structure. Originating during a time when a number of artist-founded organizations are springing up in the U.S, MR provides its founders with informal environments for dialogue & dancing together, & it evolves into a structure that supports workshops in experimental movement investigations.
Periodic performance presentations began in 1979 and the first benefit performance in April 1979, featuring Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Valda Setterfield & Douglas Dunn, at 40 Irving Place was called “the concert of the decade” by press!
1983 marks the first year of Open Performance, a monthly series for artists & students to present works-in-progress to small audiences followed by open discussion of the work by audience & artists, originally held in studios at Ethnic Folk Arts at 179 Varick Street and Simone Forti’s Studio at 537 Broadway.
Throughout these first five years, there is no Movement Research office, with the organization being run out of the backpacks of the Board of Directors across various studios across lower Manhattan where classes & workshops took place, such as KIVA at 307/309 Canal Street, Dance Theater Workshop (DTW) at 219 W 9th Street, and Performance Space 122 at 150 1st Avenue.
To see all locations, check out the Movement Research Map! Be sure to check back each week as we update this map with all of the spaces MR has been from 1978 to now!
