A project by Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener

Danspace Project was invited by artist and MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient, Josiah McElheny, to participate in Madison Square Park Conservancy’s thirty-fourth exhibition, Prismatic Park. Danspace Executive Director & Chief Curator, Judy Hussie-Taylor, invited four dance artists, including Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener to “inhabit” the Park to realize new commissions throughout the exhibition, which runs from June 13, 2017 through October 8, 2017.

Desire Lines is a public movement practice unfolding and accumulating over two weeks. A site-based improvisation world inspired by the work and ideas of architect Claude Bragdon, Theosophist Annie Besant, and spirit-medium and artist Ethel Le Rossignol, and the manifold chaos of mapping a collective consciousness for social change in an urban environment.

“Ideally the role of the audience is that of a group member of the composition. They are given the freedom to discover and select out of a series of possible combinations of relationships. A single center of focus is never imposed on them. They are participants in the very act of composition. The elements of indeterminacy utilized in the composition make this possible, the non-fixed space, and the open implications and associations. Choice is a freedom built into the composition for the benefit of the spectator. This involvement is the audience role.”–Anna Halprin

“The creation of an object is the passing out of an image from the mind and its subsequent materialisation.”–Thought-Forms by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater

Featuring
David Rafael Botana | Justin Faircloth | Stanley Gambucci | Jennifer Gonzalez
Eleanor Hullihan | Kate Jewett | Catherine Kirk | Cori Kresge | Rashaun Mitchell
Mina Nishimura | Silas Riener | Maddie Schimmel | André Zachery

Can we connect to each other through public space? Can we defy systems of control, find new pathways and move to create better futures? Throughout the weeks June 20-25 and June 27-July 2, dancers will appear in Madison Square Park, individually and in small groups.  The navigation of internal landscapes, external architecture and public desire will culminate on July 1st with dancing from 10am-9pm. Free Workshop open to all people 10am-1pm Sunday July 2nd.

Costumes by George Venson/Voutsa. Painted image by Federico de Francesco. |  www.rashaunsilasdance.com

More details about Mitchell + Riener’s events available here. Visit www.madisonsquarepark.org for more information on Prismatic Park.