EDITOR’S LETTER
I like lists for various reasons. Here’s a list of the titles of every Movement Research Performance Journal: First Issue (PJ#1, September 1990); Second Issue (PJ#2, January 1991); Gender and Performance (PJ#3, September 1991); The Identity Issue (PJ#4, January 1992); Environments (PJ#5, September 1992); Heroes and Histories (PJ#6, April 1993); States of the Body (PJ#7, September 1993); A Travel Issue (PJ#8, April 1994); Body of Language (PJ#9, September 1994); performance/protest/resistance/activism (PJ#10, January 1995); Conversations (PJ#11, September 1995); Dollars and Sensibility (PJ#12, January 1996); Body and Belief (PJ#13, September 1996); The Legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn (PJ#14, April 1997); Moving Communities (PJ#15, September 1997); Fame (PJ#16, April 1998); Memory Place (PJ#17, September 1998); Release Part I (PJ#18, September 1999); Release Part II (PJ#19, September 1999); Technology and the Body (PJ#20, January 2000); Age and the Trajectory of the Body in Time (PJ#21, September 2000); Ownership (PJ#22, January 2001); Now (PJ#23, September 2001); Fragile (PJ#24, April 2002); Dance Writing (PJ#25, September 2002); The Model (PJ#26, March 2003); Then and Now (PJ#27/28, Spring 2004); Improvisation is Dead: Long Live Improvisation (PJ#29, Spring 2005); cover artist Jennifer Monson (PJ#30, January 2007); cover artist Tere O’Connor (PJ#31, August 2007); cover artist Meg Stuart (PJ#32, January 2008); cover artist Ralph Lemon (PJ#33, August 2008); cover artist DANCENOISE (PJ#34, January 2009); cover artist Keith Hennessey (PJ#35, August 2009); cover artist Hahn Rowe (PJ#36, January 2010); cover artist Chrysa Parkinson (PJ#37, September 2010); cover artist Ishmael Houston-Jones (PJ#38, January 2011); cover artist Xavier Le Roy (PJ#39, September 2011); cover artist Sarah Michelson (PJ#40, March 2012), cover artist Rudy Perez (PJ#41, September 2012); cover artist Yasuko Yokoshi (PJ#42, March 2013). Welcome to PJ#43, October 2013 with cover artist Zeena Parkins!
One of the many reasons we selected Zeena to be the cover artist has to do with questions of collaboration and its striking significance throughout her career. How do our collaborators shift our practices? As this issue’s content came into being, collaboration emerged as a theme for many of the featured artists. Reid Bartelme and Jmy James Kidd address collaboration in their discussions and statements concerning costumes and choreography. Ponderosa is a dance festival founded from cooperative living and process. Artists unite in protest against state violence and injustice at this year’s 55th Venice Biennale. Donna Uchizono reminisces on the collective urgency in her 1990s downtown dance community with John Jasperse, Tere O’Connor and Jennifer Monson.
Matthew Lyons’ ongoing PJ series “Black Box/White Cube: Six Sides, Typologically Distinct” brings Adrienne Truscott and Sara Greenberger Rafferty into dialogue about their approaches to gender, body politics and comedy. Please dive into Fiona Templeton’s Datebook — it really is a must read. Her elegant interweaving of life and art practice makes me feel human. An incidental theme, but a clear one in this issue, is the strong presence of women, their distinct lives, histories, senses of self and creative strategies.
This issue started with conversations last spring between Ursula Eagly, Buck Wanner and myself and has continued over the months with the wonderful addition of Rebecca Wender to our editorial team. Super thanks to this core editorial group and particularly to Ursula for leading the journal for the past year. Thank you Lydia Bell for making another thoughtful and thorough portfolio. Effie Bowen and Andrew Dinwiddie, thank you for spontaneously jumping in as contributing editors. Miana Jun and Jeff Preiss, thank you for all the photos and back and forth. Thank you Conor Creaney for expert grammar. Enormous and unending gratitude to Trajal Harrell and Troy Lambert for their wisdom, experience, and patience; these two have worked on this publication for seven years and continue to work on it with unyielding commitment. Thank you MR office staff — we obviously could not do this without you. The entire journal is a collaborative effort. The words on these pages are the thoughts of our wide community of artists and their diverse strategies of practicing performance.
– Moriah
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COVER ARTIST PORTFOLIO EDITOR’S LETTER
When I began working on the Zeena Parkins portfolio early this summer, more than one person referred to Zeena as an “enigma” – an intriguing if intimidating thing to hear as an editor. I was shocked to see how little the scholarly field has produced on a composer that the Encyclopedia of Popular Music deems “at the forefront of contemporary experimental music.” Indeed, it’s not easy to find writers and thinkers that are comfortable in Zeena’s creative territory, where genre, authorship and traditional compositional values are constantly in flux, if not in question. This is why I was particularly pleased to work with the expansive minds of Gelsey Bell, Seth Cluett, Moriah Evans, and Zeena herself on this portfolio. It is my hope that in sharing with you even the smallest fraction of Zeena’s remarkable and enigmatic creative spirit, we can deepen our understanding of the relationship between dance and music, choreographer and composer, and the very terms of what a collaborative relationship is and can be.
– Lydia Bell
