Constellations and Influences: Moriah Evans
February 21, 2013
In 2012 Danspace Project presented two historic Platforms, Parallels and Judson Now. In 2013 we continue to explore artistic constellations and lineages. What web of connections do new generations of artists trace? Who are their influences?
This season we will ask each artist to share a significant artistic influence. Below is Moriah Evans’ response.
Moriah Evans: It’s funny that you should ask this question as it’s related to one of the things that I have been working on with The Bureau for the Future of Choreography (an apparatus — striving for collective authorship — that produces choreographies and documents).
As part of a Studies Project in the Spring 2012 Movement Research Festival, we put out a call for practitioners of contemporary dance and choreography to map the past fifty years in dance through The Flowchart Project. We recently did a second version of this project at American Realness in January.
Taking inspiration from MoMA Director Alfred Barr’s infamous 1935 Flowchart of Modernism and subsequent responses to his gesture, The Flowchart Project is an endeavor to collect mappings of contemporary dance and choreography. What might a flowchart for contemporary dance/performance look like? Where and when does your flowchart for contemporary dance start? Where does it end? What are your ideologies—how do you name them? What are your histories—who marks them? What hasn’t been written?
In addition to many, many anonymous submissions, here is a list of some of the contributors to this nascent archive: Alfred Barr, Biba Bell, Lydia Bell, David Bernstein, Straus Bourque-LaFrance & Tess Dworman, Megan Byrne, Nicole Daunic, Thomas DeFrantz & Shireen Dickson, Evelyn Donnelly, Christine Elmo, Barbara Grubel, Rama Hoetzlein, Kyli Kleven, Jocelyn Ladd, Yve Laris-Cohen, George Maciunas, Joao Martins, Katy Matheson, Steve May, Neal Medlyn, Mina Nishimura, Suzan Polat, Ben Pryor, Ad Reinhardt, Constanze Schellow, Stockholm-based crew (Stina Nyberg, Zoe Poluch, Rebekkah Stillman, Uri Turkenich), Mariana Valenciana, Aynsley Vandenbroucke, Buck Wanner, Wikipedia.
My own influences fall somewhere in this grand yet humble project–between the bodies of so many people and moments. Another Performance certainly relates to this project.
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Moriah Evans in collaboration with Alan Calpe Another Performance runs February 21-23, 2013 at Danspace Project.