Renewal Residency: Mina Nishimura
2021-22 Renewal Resident artist Mina Nishimura returns for residency time in the Sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church in anticipation of the premiere of a new work commissioned by Danspace Project this year.
By conversing with peripheral spaces and invisible inhabitants through specific physical modalities, Nishimura continues to sketch out an alternate dimension of St. Marks Church (like “The Upside Down”), which she began this fall in a Danspace residency.
“In my experience of social and identity divisions during the pandemic, I came to re-imagine a space we live through ‘around-ness’ and ‘in-between-ness,’ which are often ignored because these ambiguous spaces don’t fit within a world structured by categorization, division, and marginalization,” she writes. “This project started from a movement experimentation of accessing a world through expanded perceptions and particle energy as opposed to arrow-like wave energy, which forcibly takes us to familiar terrain.”
This residency is not open to the public. Stay tuned for updates on the premiere of this work!
Mina Nishimura, from Tokyo, carries Buddhism-influenced philosophies across her butoh-grounded performance and choreographic practices. In recent years she has been performing and collaborating with groundbreaking artists including John Jasperse, Dean Moss, Neil Greenburg, Vicky Shick, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener and SIA for her Saturday Night Live performance. Recent commissions include NYU Skirball Center, Danspace Project, Gibney, Mount Tremper Arts Center, and Sarah Lawrence College. Nishimura is a recipient of Dance Magazine’s Best Performance of 2018, FCA’s Grants to Artists award 2019, and was a featured cover artist in the May 2021 issue of Dance Magazine. She received her MFA from Bennington College, where she currently teaches alongside her artistic practice.