Moriah Evans
Figuring
Presented by SculptureCenter
WORLD PREMIERE
Tuesday, January 9, 5:30pm
Wednesday, January 10, 5:30pm
Friday, January 12, 5:30pm
Saturday, January 13, 5:30pm
Sunday, January 14, 5:30pm
Run Time: 90 minutes
SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves St, Long Island City
Single Tickets $25 / Gibney Festival Pass $20
Originating from internal physical processes, Moriah Evans’ Figuring takes micro movements as method. Through the engagement of energies, reactions, and interactions, three female performers make visible and audible internal systems in order to pitch them against the external forces of space and other. Control and loss of control become the borders that the performers traverse in a series of measured movements that attempt to reconfigure the perceived cohesiveness and stability of the human form. Through pacing and scale, physical gestures make malleable the inner qualities of the body, as well as the sensation of time. Figuring brings forth the unseen, yet felt, world of bodies and space.
Figuring is commissioned by SculptureCenter and is presented by SculptureCenter in partnership with American Realness.
Figuring was partially developed through a residency at MoMA PS1. The piece was also researched and honed through financial, administrative, and residency support provided by the Dance in Process program at Gibney Dance with funds provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Photo by Derek Schultz courtesy of MoMA PS1
Choreography and performance: Moriah Evans with Lizzie Feidelson, Nicole Mannarino and Sarah Beth Percival
Lights: Kathy Kaufmann
Styled by: Strauss Bourque-LaFrance
Sound: Ka Baird
Moriah Evans is an artist working in and on the form of dance—as artifact, object and culture with its histories, protocols, default production mechanisms, modes of staging and viewing—and the capacity of the public to read dance. Her choreographies navigate utopic and dystopic potentials and tendencies within dance, approached as a fleshy and matriarchal form sliding between minimalism and excess.
Evans’s notable works include “Out of and Into (8/8): STUFF” (2012); “Another Performance” (2013); “Social Dance 1-8: Index” (2015); “Social Dance 9-12: Encounter” (2015); “Be my Muse” (2016); and “Out of and Into: Contain” (2016). Her choreographic work has been commissioned and presented in New York by Danspace Project; MoMA PS1; Issue Project Room; Movement Research at Judson Church; and the American Realness festival; in California at CalIT2; as well as internationally at Kampnagel (Hamburg, Germany); Theatre de l’Usine (Geneva, Switzerland); Villa Empain (Brussels, Belgium); and Atelier de Paris Carolyn Carlson (Paris, France).
Evans was an Artist-in-Residence at Movement Research (2011-2013); The New Museum (2012); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2013, 2014); Issue Project Room (2014); Studio Series at New York Live Arts (2015); and MoMA/PS1 (2016). She was nominated for the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Emerging Choreographer for her work Social Dance 1-8 Index (2015). During her residency at Movement Research, she initiated The Bureau for the Future of Choreography, a collective apparatus involved in research processes and practices to investigate participatory images of performance and systems of choreography.
Evans received her B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Wellesley College and her M.A. in Art History, Theory, and Criticism from the University of California, San Diego. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Movement Research Performance Journal.