Movement Research – Details, episodes & analysis

January 22, 2020. 

Organized by André Daughtry

This panel intends to speak to an illegibility of the spiritual black body to predominantly white audiences in performance with artists whose work addresses an "epistemic absence” in the performance community. Noting that Experimental performance can be extremely innovative when probing the multiplicitous issues surrounding identity, guest artists will discuss how they address normative approaches to performance – like the performer/spectator bifurcation –when the performers exhibiting work were often raised in spiritually infused movement traditions as participant-observers not as “audience”

Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronted and instigated by the dance and performance community.

For more information on Movement Research please visit www.movementresearch.org

December 8, 2019. 

Moderated by Ni’Ja Whitson
Panelists: Cheryl Clark, Martha Eddy, Kayvon Pourazar, and Sangeeta Vallabhan.

This Studies Project explored how social injustices impact people’s lives and communities; who has access to healing and somatic practices; how we as somatics practitioners are working with offering trauma-informed approaches to our communities.
This event brought together artists and practitioners whose individual somatic and trauma-informed practices were generated from their personal journeys, commitment to healing themselves, and process of sharing their research to hold space for others. Through this conversation we attempted to address how to generate more inclusive, collective and fully accessible healing spaces.

This Studies Project was a part of the Movement Research Festival Fall 2019: ComeUnion. It took place on December 8, 2019 at Movement Research on First Avenue in New York City. 

Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronted and instigated by the dance and performance community.

For more information on Movement Research please visit www.movementresearch.org

October 10, 2017

This is a Movement Research podcast of Studies Project entitled: Stories, Strategies and Practices

Hosted by the Movement Research Artists of Color Council and Organized by Lily Bo Shapiro and Stanley Gambucci With Arthur Aviles, Ebony Noelle Golden, Eli Tamondong and Stephanie Acosta. This event took place on October 10, 2017.

The Movement Research Artists of Color Council gathers together an intergenerational group of dance makers and performers to discuss their artistic practices and the practical realities that go hand in hand with them. Each bring a range of aesthetic and cultural lineages, career trajectories, and studio practices into the room. This conversation will hold each artist's individual experiences and knowledge of the field up as a crucial, shared resource. 

Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community.

For more information on Movement Research please visit www.movementresearch.org

May 9, 2017

Organized by Wildcat! (André Zachary, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Eleni Zaharopoulos)

Wildcat!, a civically-minded, collaborative performance organization, brings together a panel of performers, artists, and activists to discuss how equitable conflict manifests in contemporary performance practices. How might the role of conflict be reconsidered within collaborative work? What potential lies in negotiating equitable conflict as a means of devising performance? As a means of shifting from militaristic ideas of conflict toward cyclical acts of supportive response?

Including Chloë Bass, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Justine Williams

Nia Love re-configures and re-examines the meanings of ‘safe-space’, domesticity, and self care in an installment of her latest project, the Epic Memory Lab (EMLab). Taking the form of a potluck, Love will facilitate a candid dialogue about healing and aging that will be guided by the recipes, stories, and family heirlooms offered by attendees.

EMLab is informed by the structure of Kitchen Konversations, a series developed by Nia Love and Marjani Forté-Saunders.

April 29, 2017

This conversation will take a detailed look at the culture around child-rearing as a performer. How do structures and attitudes in the field invite and support or discourage and overlook the choice to be primarily a dancer, rather than a dance-maker? In a dance economy focused on finding support for choreographers, what are the concrete ways performers are finding to navigate parenting and dancing?

Moderated by Nia Love 

With Anna Azrieli, Peggy Cheng, Heather Olson Trovato, Samantha Speis and Sarah White-Ayón

April 11, 2017

Moderated and organized by Hadar Ahuvia and Ali Rosa-Salas

Citation and adaptation have been fertile and even groundbreaking creative processes. Cultural appropriations have also masked power dynamics and violent processes of dispossession. How are performance makers navigating citational and appropriative processes with intention and within a range of proximities and intimacies with their sources? How do these artistic practices contend with and complicate colonial and extractive procedures?

With Yoshiko Chuma, Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade, Will Rawls, Rosy Simas, and Reggie Wilson

Movement Research's editors create a temporary "publication": a live site igniting conversation, debate and language around the current moment. Faced with extreme conservatism, how will New York City dance/performance people activate their power, access, resources and social missions? Questions will be posed and answered within a time limit. Categories include: culture in the current political climate; gossip; equity; formulating a new avant-garde in a socially responsible way. GAME SHOW! 

Gameshow players: Lydia Bell, Siobhan Burke, Jaime Shearn Coan, Yve Laris Cohen, Benjamin Akio Kimitch, Esther Neff, Ali Rosa-Salas, DeeArah Wright

November 30, 2016

A panel discussion moderated by Kay Takeda, Director of Grants & Services at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
Panelists: Aaron Mattocks, Juliana May, Katy Pyle, Antonio Ramos

Since the development of the Dancers Compact from 1996 to 2002, multiple efforts have been undertaken in the field to better understand, support, and advocate for the needs of dance artists, and for the importance of self-care. This is an essential and ongoing issue for each dance artist and for the field as a whole. What are the approaches and practices that makers and dancers are developing to better sustain themselves and their collaborators, and what resources are out there for dance artists in NYC? Hear from artists Aaron Mattocks, Katy Pyle, Juliana May, and Antonio Ramos, who are each actively pursuing different ways to address these questions – and add your own experiences, ideas, and practices to the mix.

 Movement Research Studies Project, "Passage a dialogue with doulas, dancers, and caregivers" - June 7, 2016


Moderated by Risa Shoup with panelists Anna Carapetyan, devynn emory, Robert Kocik, and iele paloumpis.

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?