Artists Reach Out: Lynn Neuman

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Lynn Neuman

Lynn Neuman
(photo: Joshua Davis)

Lynn Neuman is a choreographer, director, educator and organizer who serves as Artistic Director of Artichoke Dance Company based in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for her multi-year programs to mitigate plastic pollution on Coney Island and to pass plastic bag legislation in New York State, dancing in plastic bag costumes and collecting petition signatures for over three years. She has created 40 works for Artichoke Dance, been commissioned to create 20 works for other companies and schools, and has directed eight operas. Her site-specific work has been commissioned by the DUMBO Improvement District to enliven public spaces, The Waterfront Alliance to celebrate the Bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and The Soraya to connect the campus of California State University with Los Angeles River restoration. Stage commissions include the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Place and the Joffrey Ballet School. Lynn is an Association of Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellow and the only choreographer to date to receive a Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts. Recently, her work has been featured in Broadway World, Inside Arts Magazine, Dance Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. Lynn has taught at Peridance, Joffrey Ballet School, and Ballet Arts in NYC, was a Lincoln Center Teaching Artist for ten years, and has been a guest artist at universities and arts programs across the country. She serves as a volunteer coastal cleanup coordinator, is on the Steering Committee of 350Brooklyn, is a regional organizer for Global Water Dances, and a member of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice.

Lynn Neuman
(photo: John Priola)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

At the time of the shelter-in-place order, I was working on a dance for the gardens of the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, FL that was to be performed on Earth Day. We, Artichoke Dance, were also scheduled to perform and offer trashion--fashion from trash--workshops at Car-Free Earth Dance in New York and had a series of events, including a workshop using movement to model environmental justice principles, scheduled at Interference Archive in conjunction with their climate justice exhibit. All these were canceled or postponed.

In order to keep working, I shifted gears and am creating a dance for a videoconference format. The dancers are in their hallways, and it’s evolving to serve as a metaphor for the isolation and need for connection we are all experiencing. I’ve transitioned the community engagement components of my work into #MoveWithMe, short online videos and livestreaming sessions using movement to connect us to our bodies and ground us in this time of uncertainty and anxiety.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t sit still. My parents enrolled me in gymnastics, and I was a competitive gymnast into my teens. At 16, I took a dance class and didn’t look back. I feel fortunate to have had the support of my parents. Everyone in my immediate family is a musician and educator of some sort, so these two things are very naturally part of who I’ve come to be. Now I’m working at the intersection of arts, community activation and climate change. The variety of environments in which I’ve taught is definitely useful. What I’ve learned from my experience enables me to work with a wide range of populations, often simultaneously.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I am practicing and envisioning co-created and sustainable ways of being both in an individual body and in a community or system. For the individual body, I work with proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation patterns, which are regenerative integrative movements, and mesh these with more traditional dance actions. My hypothesis is that this will support sustained dancing in my aging body.

Choreographically, my work often begins by examining an environmentally-compromised geography or a place in transition, though many times these are synonymous. Locally, Gowanus is a focus. The canal is New York City’s first named Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency and is also targeted for the largest scale rezoning in NYC in 20 years, meaning the population will both change and explode.

After I’ve come to understand the issues present and proposed methods to address them, I devise improvisational approaches to model these in movement and then ask, does this reveal anything? If it does, I continue to pursue it. If it doesn’t, I move on to the next strategy. Several themes have emerged in this work, including hypersensitive listening, interconnectedness, and complexity in patterns and actions.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I don’t see how these couldn’t align. And I think this would be true across the board for creatively generative artists, and by that I mean people who are conceptually devising their work, as opposed to being an artist for hire, which I have also done, working in opera. Even there, my values are imposed into both the working methodology and the creative product, even if it is not topically what I would address. I supposed if someone is following a trend, as opposed to their own interests and values, this would not be true. But, sometimes those two things miraculously align.

How does your practice function within the world we have
now?

Right now, in a time of self-isolation at the currently-perceived height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, my work exists online but energetically in the air. I think about, and imagine, what other people need. I reflect on my own situation and what I’m experiencing. I ask friends and neighbors from afar. Then I put something into the world with as much care and grounding as I can and send my energy along with it. I’m thinking about what people will need in the future and am reading a lot of psychology, because I think we’ll be holding a lot in our bodies and psyches from this experience for some time.

Self-Care Tip

I spend at least a half hour every day solely petting my dog. She is a very social creature, so it’s helping us both.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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