move thing

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.

move thing is a community-based dance project proposing that the multi-sensory, improvisatory, and choreographic structures of dance contribute to reparative projects in communities that have historically been impacted by toxic contamination due to resource extraction (Uranium and coal mining) and industrial effluents (chemicals, particulates, carbon monoxide, and heavy metals). Phase One focuses on research and partnership building in two rural and one urban communities: the South Valley in Albuquerque; East Central IL, the site of coal ash seepage from the Vermillion County Power Plant; South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has one of the highest air pollution rates in NYC. Phase Two creates workshops and performances with these communities on site. Phase Three takes the methodologies developed and shares them through a migratory journey following toxic trails/flows across the continent. The artists, collaborators, and local community partners offer reparative performances, workshops, and community based actions to draw awareness to histories of toxicity, remediation and reparative cultural strategies and future sustainable practices. This phase will end with the publication of “A Workbook for a Toxic World: dance as reparative practice”, and an evening-length dance work performed in both rural and urban performance spaces.