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iLAND

Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance

ArtsPool Member
  • About
    • iLAND
    • Jennifer Monson
    • Board of Directors
    • Funders
  • Dance Projects
    • move thing
    • Choreographies of Disaster
    • ditch
    • bend the even
    • in tow
    • IN TOW TV
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 1: Kaleidoscope
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 2: Nibia Line A
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 3: Nibia Line B
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 4: Fabric | Time Experiment
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 5: Shrugs with balls-5:3
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 6: Drawing Overlay
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 7: In Out Cut 5:3
      • IN TOW TV Season 1, Episode 8: OUT-OUT-IN-IN-IN-OUT-OUT-IN-OUT-IN
      • IN TOW TV Season 1, Episode 9: Composite | Line
      • IN TOW TV Season 1, Episode 10: Flipping the Firmament | Flesh
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 11: Perspective | Tone
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 12: T | I | M | E
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 13: Time + Tone | Tide Score B
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 14: Time + Tone | Tide Score A
      • IN TOW TV – Season 1, Episode 15: Bells Long
      • Bonus Episode! Season 1, Episode 16: Video Perspective
    • Past
  • A Field Guide to iLANDing
  • iLAB Residencies
  • iLAND Symposium
  • Resources
    • A Field Guide to iLANDing
    • BIRD BRAIN Educational Resource Guide
  • iLANDing Laboratories

Courtney Cooke

move thing – November 2021 Research

February 25, 2022 by

A door is partially open, letting sunlight in and giving the viewer a peek into a garden. On the left of the door is a large window with an abstract drawing pasted on top and similiar digital drawing patterns overlaid around the window frame. In between the door and the window are informational texts about "move thing" showing on Nov 6-7 in Williamsburg, NY.

 

move thing investigates the movement of toxicities through space and socio-environmental systems. Resisting all forms of purity, the work proposes that we are all constantly, inherently, and unevenly making up each other and all other animate and inanimate beings. If we imagine ourselves as soluble, always dissolving and reconstituting choreographically, could we move through toxicity and be with and/or absorb toxicity and find new / alternative / old / transformative relationships to its states / tendencies / behaviors / effects / violences / shifts?  Could we find intelligences within our bodies and abilities to connect more deeply with the mechanisms for survival and support in sites and systems that we are a part of?  In this research event, Monson activates choreographic samples as “sites” within the meta site of the playground and invites 9 interlocutors to contaminate, remediate, and reconstitute new potentialities in the dancing. The playground which is located at the intersections of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a bus depot, and entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge has one of the highest air pollution levels in the city. Through the intelligences of improvisation and embodied knowledge, move thing attempts to begin to dislodge dominant strategies of development and resource extraction that radically harm the most vulnerable among us and to cultivate the creative sensitivities possible in this question of how we move and transform the everlasting presence of toxicities in our collective lives.

ditch

June 10, 2019 by

ditch, a new dance performance to premiere at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival on June, 23, 26, and 28, 2019. ditch responds to the distinct influx of energies that meet on the Lower East Side (LES) waterfront in New York, with a specific focus on the impact and aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The choreography is developed from the rhythms, tones, and spatial inflections of movement generated by flows of people, the built environment, weather, and water along the river’s edge. ditch accesses and creatively explores the embodied knowledge that signals both danger and safety. How do we sense impending disasters? How do we seek and recognize safe havens?

 

Photo credit: Courtesy Brian J. Green: Monson and collaborators in residency at the Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum
Photo credit: Courtesy Brian J. Green:
Monson and collaborators in residency at the Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum

Selected Press

River to River dance festival — the dawn worked its miraculous transformations – Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times

At water’s edge: Jennifer Monson / iLAND presents ‘ditch’ – Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Goings On About Town: River to River Festival – Brian Seibert, The New Yorker

6 Dance Performances to See in NYC this Weekend – Brain Schaefer, The New York Times

The Week in Arts: Jennifer Monson dances at dawn – Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

At the River to River Festival, the Art of Slowing Down – Siobhan Burke, The New York Times 

 


 

For more info and to rsvp, click here:
All performances and workshops with the River to River Festival are free to the public

Performances at Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum:

  • World Premiere: June 23 at sunrise, 5:30am 
  • June 26, 7pm
  • June 28, 7pm

Plus! an iLANDing Workshop, Pier 35 East River Esplanade:

  • June 23, 11am, Pier 35
    (Closest entrance at Rutgers Slip)

Choreography: Jennifer Monson
Performers/Dancers: Courtney Cooke, Kaitlin Fox, Madeline Mellinger
Composer and Sound Artist: Jeff Kolar
Costume Designer: Susan Becker
Lighting Designer: Ben Demarest

 

ditch is supported in part by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
 by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Fine and Applied Arts and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.ditch by Jennifer Monson is commissioned by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, developed as part of LMCC’s Extended Life Dance Development program made possible in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Presented by LMCC as part of River To River. Space generously provided by South Street Seaport Museum.
 
Presented in partnership with The Howard Hughes Corporation. 

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