We’re back from two and a half days of focused time in the studio with twelve awesome dancers. Thanks for having us, Electric Fish!
(Snow-covered) Emergent Architectures in Boston
Author Archives: Zena
Please mark your calendars and be sure to join us for a mvmtPARTY to usher in summer and raise funds for upcoming Movement Party projects.
Monday, May 12
The Green Building
452 Union Street
Brooklyn
Featuring small bites, signature cocktails, performances, and a DANCE PARTY!
Invitations to follow.
For more information on joining our host committee or volunteering, please email the.movement.party@gmail.com.
Generously hosted by Gowanus Art + Production at the Green Building.
Photo by Whitney Browne
Performances in New York, Virginia, Cairo, Alexandria, and Your Computer!
I’ll Dance While You’re Dancing & We Will Have Danced Together
(Cairo and Alexandria editions)
Presented in partnership with:
PRELUDE:
This month, Movement Party members Zena Bibler, Katie Schetlick, and Abigail Levine have been rehearsing via Skype with a group of dancers in Cairo, Egypt to stage I’ll Dance While You’re Dancing & We Will Have Danced Together for the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival.
If you’re in NYC or VA this week, we invite you to catch a live lunchtime performance on Friday (3/21) at Culturehub or at the Bridge PAI on Saturday (3/29).
BUT, wherever you are, you can tune in digitally to see how these different locations connect by following along online:
Twitter: @MVMTparty
Vine: the movement party
LIVE PERFORMANCES:
Friday 21 March (12pm NY time)
Cairo – The GrEEK Campus
New York – Culturehub
*Culturehub space is limited. RSVP requested.
Saturday 22 March (12pm NY time)
Cairo – The GrEEK Campus
Saturday 29 March (12pm NY time)
Alexandria – Teatro Eskendria
Charlottesville – The Bridge PAI
HOW IT WORKS // WHAT YOU’LL SEE, HEAR, AND FEEL:
Using handheld technology, participating performers will respond to each other’s movements across time and space.
Each performer is instructed to create an instant, spontaneous composition in response to the particularities of their own location and subjective experience, filming certain elements to share with other performers. This score has been performed at the Museum Perron Oost in Amsterdam and at the International Dance Theatres Festival in Lublin, Poland.
Created by: Katie Schetlick, Zena Bibler & Abigail Levine in collaboration with the Movement Party
Performed by: Dalia el Abd, Mohamed Mahmoud El Sayed, Engy Ahmed, Katie Schetlick, Zena Bibler, Abigail Levine, Kristin Clotfelter, Anne Zuerner, Rishauna Zumberg, Brandin Steffensen, Hannah Krafcik, Mikey Rioux, Josefina Camus, Erik Deluca, Diana Crum, Veronica Hart, Danielle LeCompte and Kendra Emery.
Photo by Whitney Browne
Northern Adventures
Last week, I joined fellow Movement Party member Brandin Steffensen in Buffalo to facilitate “Now Practices: Researching improvisation as performance.” Over the course of five days, we formed a a temporary ensemble of dancers and spent more than 45 hours in Wasteland Studios, dancing and discussing dancing. Collectively, we built the culminating performance, “Now The Show,” from practices offered by facilitators and scores developed collaboratively by the group. We drew from Nancy Stark Smith’s group contact improvisation form, the Underscore; Brandin Steffensen’s game structure, Pentamode; Barbara Dilley’s Contemplative Dance Practice; and the Movement Party’s site-specific workshop, Relationscapes. Throughout the rehearsal process, we practiced these forms one after another, paying close attention to the phenomena unique to each and shared by each—moving towards a scaffolding for our improvised performance.
As part of this process, we got to spend a day at Silo City, playing in the abandoned grain elevators and surrounding landscape. Here are some snapshots from our Relationscapes adventures there:
photo: Jim Bush
photo: Jim Bush
photo: Jim Bush
photo: Zena Bibler
Huge thanks to Jim Bush for the photos and also to Nancy Hughes and the rest of the team at Buffalo CI for hosting this wonderful experience!
Join us online for a networked performance
Greetings from Lublin, Poland! This month, the Movement Party has been in residence at the Centrum Kultury in Lublin, Poland (above) in preparation for the 17th annual International Dance Theatres Festival. On Friday we will perform the latest in a series of scores we have been developing using short video segments as material for a shared improvisation.
We will be dancing in ten separate geographic locations and connecting via a video feed. You can catch the action in real time on Twitter by following @MVMTparty (no Twitter account required).
Friday, November 8th
1pm EST // 7pm CST
@MVMTparty
I’ll Dance While You’re Dancing and We Will Have Danced Together, can best be summed up as a nonlinear game of (dance video) telephone. Using handheld technology participating performers respond to each other’s movements across time and space. Each performer is instructed to create an instant composition in response to the particularities of their own location and subjective experience, filming resonant elements to share with other performers. As video accumulates, performers are invited to respond to the contributions of others, tracking the flow of inspiration and the manner in which ideas get taken up, transported, developed, and recycled.
Performers: Zena Bibler, Tara Bonanno, Katharine Birdsall, Josefina Camus, Kristin Clotfelter, Diana Crum, Erik DeLuca, Katie Schetlick, Brandin Steffensen, Sage Tanguay, Anne Zuerner, and Rishauna Zumberg.
Time, Travel: Amsterdam
Supervisor cottage in Cruquisweg
Performers: Matias Daporta Gonzalez & collaborators
Of Note: Museum Perron Oost occupies a small stretch of track and the adjacent supervisor cottage that used to connect routes to the Eastern Dockyards. In 2013, the section and cottage were saved from destruction and renovated. The track area was paved with cobblestones and planted with trees that flank on either side. A wagon still remains with a piece of original track, as a testament to the 150-year history of the Eastern Dockyards—originally a trade site for livestock and goods from the Dutch Empire.
Time, Travel: Rhode Island
Westerly Train Station and Track Sidings
Performers: Zena Bibler and Anne Zuerner
Active: 1837-present
Length: Originally part of the Providence-Stonington line, then the New York Providence & Boston Railroad (NYP&B), later the New York, New Haven & Hartford line (NYNH&H), now connects with Amtrak service between Newport News and Boston.
Construction: Current Westerly station: 2 years (1912-1913)
Of Note: Built in the style of Spanish Revival—interest in the country’s colonial Spanish ties was strong due to the recent admission of Arizona and New Mexico as states earlier that year. New station was needed as part of “curve reduction” project undertaken by New Haven. Original fare was $0.06 per passenger per mile or $0.25 per ton of freight per mile.
Time, Travel with The Movement Party
Join us online for a networked performance
The Movement Party has been asked to create a new performance for The Transcontinental Express exhibition at the Museum Perron Oost. We will be dancing in three separate geographic locations and connecting via a video feed. You can catch the action in real time on Twitter by following @MVMTparty.
August 31st
1pm, EST // 7pm CEST
@MVMTparty
In Time, Travel we position ourselves between several technologies that have redefined how we experience space, time, and connection to each other—from webs of iron and steel that connected entire continents to digital networks that allow users to communicate far beyond the reaches of physical presence. Dancing together from the separate satellites of Rhode Island, Virginia, and Amsterdam, we will create a nonlinear time and place in which to contemplate our relationship to time, distance, and presence across the two, and how these concepts evolve in relation to the technologies we interact with. In constant transit between time zones, geographic locations, and overlapping historical contexts,Time, Travel invites participants to transcend preconceived systems of time and space, and act as navigators, or travelers of time.
Crozet Tunnel, VA
The Movement Party, NADA Hudson
Railroad Map, RI
Westerly Station, RI
Movement Party Performance Blueprint
Museum Perron Oost, Amsterdam
For progress updates and information about the locations we’ll be broadcasting from, visit our blog.
Fleet Moves has wrapped for the season. Thanks for your presence, support, and enthusiasm! We’re already hatching plans for Fleet Moves 2014 so stay tuned…
CLASSCLASSCLASS with Zena, Brandin, and Katie
CLASSCLASSCLASS: Relationscapes
Wednesdays in June – 12:30-2:30pm
Arts@Renaissance
2 Kingsland Avenue
$8
Images: Jan Welters, Jan Vredeman de Vries, Manuel Mira Godinho
Through a series of experiments and exercises we will use our bodies as primary investigators to define and examine the larger political, social, and organizational choreographies already at work in public spaces. Together we will increase our awareness of the ways our own and other bodies are informed by systems such as architecture, urban planning, transit, behavioral norms, surveillance, as well as our own expectations, in order to investigate how improvisation might work as a tool to increase our awareness and agency within these intersecting systems.
Taught by: Brandin Steffensen, Zena Bibler, and Katie Schetlick for CLASSCLASSCLASS.
the movement party 
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