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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

Susan Becker

Susan Becker is a designer, artist, and educator in fashion and dress. Since graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, she has designed for traditional and experimental settings, from the fashion industry to collaborations on stage, film and site-specific projects. In addition to her design work, Becker has also taught fashion and dress courses for RISD and the University of Illinois. Her solo work explores the social psychology of dress and culture.

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. 

bend the even

November 28, 2017 by

bend the even  revisits  Jennifer Monson’s research into the indeterminate phenomena that exist at the edges of human perception. Accessing new frameworks for emanating presence and animacy through the three mediums of sound, light and movement the work leaves the audience at the edge of perceptual comprehension.  Undoing hierarchies of value between viewer and performer bend the even explores containment and relinquishing through ever-narrowing parameters. This work allows for the possibility that movement disappears and leaves only sensation, an emanation that is experienced through the skin and ears, not so much through the eyes. In bend the even this requires the viewer to relinquish what might be tangible about the experience in preparation for what is newly emerging. 

 

Selected Press

Jennifer Monson’s iLAND premieres “bend the even” – Eva Yaa Asantewaa for Infinite Body

From the Prairie to the City, Dancing to Invoke the Dawn – Gia Kourlas for The New York Times

Review: A Dance About the Dawn, but Not the Quiet Dawn – Brian Seibert for The New York Times

A White Room Full of Nature – Martha Sherman for dancelog

The “Wild Beyond” of Jennifer Monson’s ‘bend the even’ – Emma Zigman


bend the even

Chocolate Factory
(tickets now available at the link above!)
February 20-24, 2018
8 pm

bend the even is a full length dance performance premiering at The Chocolate Factory in New York City in February 2018. Initiated by choreographer Jennifer Monson in collaboration with composers Zeena Parkins and Jeff Kolar, lighting designer Elliott Jenetopulos, scenic designer Regina Garcia, costume designer Susan Becker, and dancer Mauriah Kraker, bend the even returns to Monson’s research into the indeterminate phenomena that exist at the edges of human perception. The project focuses on the relationship between optics, reception and the shifting continuity between sound, light, and movement. The piece creates a system of relationships that weave the mediums of movement, sound, light and structure(both architectural and costume) together into a field of perceptual phenomena that leave the audience at the edge of comprehension. bend the even explores containment and relinquishing through ever-narrowing parameters.  

The research for this project was started in February 2017 with weekly rehearsals at dawn. These rehearsals have generated material connections between light, music, and movement – not as a representation of the liminal states of dawn but as a way of accessing new frameworks for emanating presence and animacy through the three mediums. This work allows for the possibility that movement disappears and leaves only sensation, an emanation that is experienced through the skin and ears, not so much through the eyes. Through the choreographic process, the collaborators will research the physics of sound, light, and movement on multiple scales – both scientific and experiential – drawing on atmospheric science as well as particle physics to inform the dawn practice.  

In the choreography, this manifests through repetition, vibration and vocalizing as well as through pressure and resistance of bodies with each other and the surfaces around them. The scenic elements – light, set and costumes – will enable collaborators to experiment with the ideas of refraction and reflection, using different opacities of material and mediums to bend perspectives of motion and light.  The sound score, jointly authored by Parkins and Kolar, addressies issues of duration and continuity through the use of the more controllable sounds of the acoustic harp with the less determined sounds of radio waves and feedback.  Objects located in different parts of the space are amplified and processed with a small synth. Parkins uses the acoustic harp to create continuous, mesmerizing patterns, that morph over time and offer the choreography a place to push up against, and off from.  The electric harp, laid horizontally on the floor for this piece, emits  tones in resistance to each other.  The combination of the two sonic worlds of Kolar and Parkins will be influenced by the particle and wavelength behavior of sound and light.  

 

All aspects of the piece will immerse the audience in a contemplative environment that shifts at  varying rates from the imperceptible to the sudden. Sound will be projected from various sources throughout the building, including: live instrumentation of acoustic and electric harp, radio transmission, numerous speakers, The lighting design will illuminate the audience as much as the performers. Shadows cast from extreme angles of light onto structures of varying textures will partition the space. The tone and shape of the costumes will work in combination with light and movement to enhance the emanating vibrations of the movement. 

bend the even is inspired, in part, by the work of Agnes Martin, whose grid paintings undo hierarchies of value between the viewer and the object, the surface and the field. Nothing is lasting or arriving; Every thing is barely perceptible through variations in scale. In bend the even this requires the viewer to relinquish what might be tangible about the experience in preparation for what is newly emerging. 

 


Jennifer Monson and luciana achugar for special conversation at the
Chocolate Factory
Saturday January 13, 2018
4pm.

Refreshments will be served.
This event is free and open to the public.

 

in tow

April 4, 2017 by

Starting with the basic question of how and why we experiment, we have spent the past three years developing questions, practices, material, and scores that look at how movement, sound and image can be used to research perceptual, philosophical, and social constructs in our current political and aesthetic contexts. – Jennifer Monson

Jennifer Monson “in tow” Research in 2015 from MANCC on Vimeo.

IN TOW TV uses the experimental scores and practices of the research process of in tow to create short videos launched on Instagram and Facebook in May 2017. For more, visit thein tow tv channel. 

Selected Press

The Promise of Uncertain Equivalency – Colin Gee

Review: Jennifer Monson, the Spellbinding Shape-Shifter – Brian Seibert for The New York Times

Impressions of: Jennifer Monson/iLAND’s “in tow” at Danspace Project – Erin Bomboy for Dance Enthusiast

Reaching for the Horizon Line: Jennifer Monson/iLAND’s in tow – Angela Brown for Routine Magazine


IN TOW
September 23–24 + September 29–October 1, 2016
8 pm (see below regarding pre-attacks)
Danspace Project
Tickets: $20 general admission / $15 Danspace members

in tow is an ongoing performance research project bringing together 10 artists from 4 different decades, straddling location, discipline and aesthetic to create an evolving working process driven by what we each bring “in tow.” The performance itself is a site for destabilizing what we are familiar with, testing new ground, defining difference and creating a shared practice that resonates with layers of experience, points of view and perspective. in tow is a collaborative project with Susan Becker, DD Dorvillier, Niall Jones, Alice MacDonald, Jennifer Monson, Valerie Oliveiro, Zeena Parkins, Angie Pittman, Nibia Pastrana Santiago. David Zambrano and Rose Kaczmarowski have also been a part of in tow, but will not be performing at Danspace Project.

The Saturday, September 24, performance will be followed by an open discussion of the experimental contexts, questions and concerns that shape the in tow project led by Professor of Performance Studies, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera.

Please note, every night of in tow is different. If you wish to attend multiple performances, we are offering $10 tickets for each additional performance you attend. Please contact lydia@danspaceproject.org for details.


in tow pre-attacks
September 29-October 1, 2016 at 6pm
Danspace Project
FREE

in tow will hold a priming event each evening during the second week of performances. These events will give the audience an opportunity to experience some of the underlying infrastructure of the work. Each night will be different and shaped by a different research area of the project. The events will develop over an hour-long period and prime the experience of the performance event, which starts at 8 pm.

September 29 horizon line/fragment
A perceptual installation that works against the receding nature of a horizon line and brings the public into a new sense of dimensionality and continuity.

September 30 tide/groove
A sound experiment developed from the horizon line set-up and the rhythmic patterns developed through the in tow process. The score activates the particularities of the acoustic architecture of the church.

October 1 solo/collective: tone/relation
A series of solos and duets that pull away what we bring in tow.

For more information, please visit www.danspaceproject.org.

 

 


 

Photo by Valerie Oliveiro

Photo by Valerie Oliveiro

in tow was initiated as a project to acknowledge and deepen the artistic and cultural legacies we carry as “experimental” cultural producers. It acknowledges the importance of experimentation as a mode of being and creates experimental modes of thinking that may not be attached to particular aesthetics and styles, while at the same time acknowledging our bodies’ histories.

The material for the performances will be drawn from two years of experimental collaborative research that explores interdisciplinary creative processes across multiple contexts. The collaborators on in tow span discipline, geography, and generation. Some are artists with whom Jennifer Monson has worked since the 1980’s: DD Dorvillier, currently based in France; Zeena Parkins, based in New York City; David Zambrano (not performing), originally from Venezuela and currently based in Belgium. Others are new collaborators Monson has met since moving to the Midwest: Susan Becker, a fashion and costume designer based in Illinois; Valerie Oliveiro, a photographer and performer based in Minnesota; and Rose Kaczmarowski (not performing), a costume designer and bicycle community activist based in Indiana. Finally, four younger collaborators are joining the project: Niall Jones, based in New York City; Nibia Pastrana Santiago, based in Puerto Rico; Angie Pittman, recently relocated from the Midwest to New York; and Alice MacDonald, also based in New York.

Photo by Valerie Oliveiro
Photo by Valerie Oliveiro
Photo by Chris Cameron
in tow at the Danspace Project, September 2016

Jennifer Monson’s in tow Residency at MANCC

Photos by Chris Cameron

Live Dancing Archive

April 4, 2017 by

Live Dancing Archive Volume I premiered at the University of Vermont in October of 2012 and was performed at The Kitchen, NYC, NY; Krannert Art Museum, Urbana, IL; Chicago Humanities Festival, IL; and Columbia College Improvisation Festival, Chicago, IL in 2013.

For the web-based archive of this project, see the website here.

Choreography: Jennifer Monson
Music Composition: Jeff Kolar
Lighting and Stage Design: Joe Levasseur
Costume Design: Susan Becker
Video Installation: Robin Vachal
Digital Archive: YoungJae Josephine Bae
Production Manager: Davison Scandrett
Dramaturgy: Betsy Brandt

Live Dancing Archive Volume II
Performers: Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson, Tatyana Tenenbaum. Photo Credit: Valerie Oliveiro

Live Dancing Archive Volume II was premiered at New York Live Arts, October 2014,  and at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, as part of THE HOUSE IS OPEN- a pop up installation and performance  event, November 2014

Choreography: Jennifer Monson
Performance: Jennifer Monson, Niall Jones, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Valerie Oliveiro
Music Composition: Jeff Kolar
Lighting and Stage Design: Joe Levasseur, Valerie Oliveiro
Costume Design: Susan Becker
Video Installation: Robin Vachal
Digital Archive: YoungJae Josephine Bae
Production Manager: Davison Scandrett

Selected Press:

Artist to Artist Talk: Jennifer Monson and DD Dorvillier on the body as archive

‘Bird of a Feather’, Brooklyn Rail Review – Cassie Peterson

‘Bringing Nature Inside With Space and Light’, New York Times Review – Siobhan Burke

Live Dancing Archive at the Chicago Humanities Festival 

‘Improvising, a Mover Lets You See Her Think’, New York Times Review – Gia Kourlas

‘Migrating Back to the Wilds of the Stage’, New York Times Feature – Brian Siebert

‘The Body as an Object of Interference: Q + A with Jeff Kolar’, Rhizome – Maura Lucking

New York Times, Dance Listings – Rosalyn Sulcas

Jennifer Monson, ‘Master Improviser’, Dance Magazine – Wendy Perron

‘Exposed in Flight’, Danceviewtimes – Martha Sherman

The New Yorker, Listing

Interview with Jennifer Monson, The Dance Enthusiast – Trina Mannino

WNYC Radio Broadcast – Brian Siebert

Time Out NY, Critics Pick – Gia Kourlas

American Realness, New York Times Review – Alastair Macaulay

____________________________________________________________________________ 

Live Dancing Archive Volume I proposes that the body has the possibility of archiving and revisiting multiple scales of experience. Specifically, Monson looks at how experiences of environment and ecological dependencies are registered through physical movement. Live Dancing Archive negotiates and explores what a queer ecology might offer for dancing bodies and rapidly shifting conceptions of place. Furthermore, the piece looks at how Monson’s navigation of her own queer, feminist and animal-like body has shaped relationships to cultural and social phenomena.

The choreography draws upon more than a decade of Monson’s own dance-based environmental research, particularly her 2002 piece BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration, an eight-week dance project and tour along the Atlantic Flyway, the bird migration route that extends from the northern Atlantic Coast to South America. The video installation and digital archive elements of the piece query the process of archiving as well as the shifting nature of dance, and environmental phenomena.

Vachal’s installation distills 50 hours of video documentation from BIRD BRAIN into a three-hour single channel video loop. The video addresses duration, sensation and multiple scales of movement, while providing an alternative perspective into the creative research process, performances, workshops, and community engagements of the extensive tour. Bae collaborated with Monson to make the web-based archive, www.livedancingarchive.org, Monson hopes the site will make a meaningful contribution to contemporary discourses about archiving dance and environmental projects.

Kolar uses the electro-magnetic spectrum of radio frequencies to compose an indeterminate score that intensely alters our perception of the space. Levasseur continuously reshapes the visual experience of the space by shifting a mobile horizon line and a range of lights in response to the spaces generated by Monson’s movement. Becker’s costumes allow Monson to transition from human to phenomenon, space invader to pop star, heroine to pedestrian, and bird to rock.

Live Dancing Archive Volume II expanded the investigation of the body as archive by transmitting the dance knowledge of Live Dancing Archive Volume I to Niall Jones. Valerie Oliveiro and Tatyana Tenenbaum. How does the work transform as it moves through and with different dancers?

The addition of the new collaborators highlights the infinite possibilities of archiving indeterminate systems and explores the creation of novel ecosystems – a term borrowed from environmental science. Novel ecosystems “differ in composition and/or function from present and past systems”

 

 

This program is made possible by 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. Also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Support for dance programs at The Kitchen is provided by Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Additional support provided by 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.

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