Live Dancing Archive

Called “a work delivered with supreme elegance” (The New York Times) joining “the emotional and visceral experience of intimacy with a choreographic language of pure physicality” (Artforum), Jennifer Monson’s Live Dancing Archive is an evening-length performance featuring a visceral exploration of the dancing body as a physical archive of experience and place. Drawing from more than a decade of dance-based environmental research, Live Dancing Archive was choreographed using material from video documentation of The BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration (2002)—an 8-week dance project along the Atlantic Flyway—as well as improvised scores accumulated over the past decade.

Originally premiered at The Kitchen in 2012 as a solo, this newly remounted iteration will reference unseen documentation from the video archive (different from the footage used in the original work) and features performers Niall Jones and Tatyana Tenenbaum along with Monson and composer Jeff Kolar, lighting designer Joe Levasseur and artist Valerie Oliveiro, with costumes designed by Susan Becker. The project is accompanied by two additional components —a video installation and a digital archive—that query the process of archiving as well as the shifting nature of dance, and environmental phenomena.

View the Live Dancing Archive webpage here.

Wed Oct 15: Post show reception in Lobby hosted by iLand. Puchase tickets online.

Thu  Sat, Oct 16 – 18, 11 – 5pm Video Archive: Jennifer Monson’s BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration. Edited by Robin Vachal from 50 hours of documentation. Free, 160 minute loop, come and go as you please.

Thu, Oct 16 Come Early Conversation at 6:30pm: The Body as Archive – Travis Chamberlain, Associate Curator of Performance at the New Museum discusses the work of Jennifer Monson. 
 
Fri, Oct 17 Stay Late Discussion: Environment of Self in Time – Jennifer Monson in conversation with La MaMa ETC Archivist and Historian, Rachel Mattson, PhD.
 
Sat, Oct 18, 1 – 4pm Shared Practice: Process-focused workshop with Jennifer Monson. $20, advance purchase recommended
 

Live Dancing Archive was created with funding support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, a Creative Research Award and Research Board Grant from the University of Illinois of Urbana Champaign and the Marsh Professorship at Large program at the University of Vermont.