Symposium on the work of leading US Environmental Dance Artist

Jennifer Monson

2 - 4 p.m.

Friday 4 May 2007

The Playroom, Great Hall Complex

Lancaster University

 

Re-Enchantment & Reclamation: New Perceptions of Morecambe Bay Through Dance, Film and Sound

http://cle.lancs.ac.uk <http://cle.lancs.ac.uk/> 

 

Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA)

 

Jennifer Monson will present an audiovisual presentation on her innovative work for iLAND and Birdbrain Dance, and will also discuss her current work for Water Log which forms part of LICA's AHRC-funded Re-enchantment & Reclamation Landscape & Environment Project.

 

Water Log consists of a three-week site-specific research and development dance process.  It is the first stage of an innovative two-stage transatlantic dance project concerned with the mirror relation between particular places in Morecambe Bay, UK, and the Hudson River Estuary, USA, that are situated ambiguously in-between water and dry land, the human and other-than-human.  

 

Jennifer Monson is pre-eminent amongst US site-specific dance artists working on the cusp between science/conservation and dance/art.  Since 1983, she has worked both in collaboration and solo in the US, Australia, Europe, Latin America and Tanzania.  Monson's work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004), the NYFA Fellowship Program (1989 and 1998) and many other funding bodies, and she has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer's Fellowship for 1989, 1992, 1993-95 and 1995-97.  Her work has been reviewed enthusiastically by some of America's most eminent dance critics, and in 1997 she was awarded a New York Dance and Performance Award ("BESSIE") for sustained achievement in the dance field.  Bird Brain, Monson's signature work, is a multi-year navigational dance project that investigates migratory patterns and habits of birds and other animals, as well as their biophysical and metaphorical relationships to humans as fellow travellers in the world.  It includes four inter-related components - site-specific out door performances, workshops, panel discussions on issues of migration, navigation and conservation, and a web site.  So far the project has consisted of three "migrations", each of which each provided approximately 30 free outdoor performances from Mexico to Canada and from Maine, through Cuba to Venezuela and from Texas to Canada.  By literally following the migratory routes of animals, Bird Brain weaves together a community across continents, ecosystems and cultures.

 

Monson has, then, a unique expertise in curating innovative dance events that facilitate immersive experiences and enable otherwise unobtainable states of perception of nature for herself, her dances and members of the wider community of nature - experiences that are enabled because, not in spite, of her scientific knowledge of the flora and fauna of the environments with which she works.  

 


Re-enchantment and Reclamation


 

Re-enchantment and Reclamation is a two-year research project funded by the AHRC which aims to develop methods in dance, film, and the sonic arts for transforming the perceptions that communities have of the place to which they belong.  In collaboration with artists and thinkers of international distinction, the project consists of 10 three-hour public lectures and 4 week-long workshops.

 


Further Re-Enchantment & Reclamation Lectures this Academic Year


 

Mike Pearson and Heike Roms

The Playroom

1500-1800

Wednesday 9 May 2007