BODY AND SOUL: Elena Demyanenko: The art of disobedience

Elena Demyanenko (photo: Charles Pace)

In this portrait set against a black background, Elena Demyanenko faces downward and at a diagonal. She is light-skinned with short, reddish hair and wears a thin necklace with a stone pendant.

Russian-born dance artist and educator Elena Demyanenko traveled from her adopted home in New York to Berlin to support the growing community of artists fleeing Russia's devastating war on Ukraine. In this moving talk, Demyanenko reflects on questions for herself and other artists making work in times of war, propaganda, censorship, and courageous disobedience.

 

Listen to Elena Demyanenko on Body and Soul podcast here. 

To learn more about her work, scroll down. 

 

Trio from Demyanenko's welter (photo: Wolfgang Daniel)

In this trio dance, Elena's right shoulder leans against the floor as her legs stretch up and her feet connect with and hold Chloë Engel’s head as Engel's body bends forward. Leah Morrison kneels nearby and observes.

Bio: Elena Demyanenko is a Russian/American dance artist, choreographer, improviser, maker of dance films, and educator who lives and works between New York City and Vermont. Elena has extensive professional performance and choreographic experience in a multicultural context from 30 years of touring around the world. She has been inventing “impossible” scores in order to un-censor the body as a source of information and a  primary site of healing and transformation. Elena is a former member of both Stephen Petronio Company (2003–2008), and Trisha Brown Dance Company (2009–2012). She has made dances with Dana Reitz, Susan Sgorbati, Joseph Poulson, Dai Jen, Pavel Zustiak, Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Kota Yamazaki, and Jimena Paz. Elena’s live performance works have been shown at many US performance venues, including Baryshnikov Art Center, Danspace Project, Roulette Intermedium, EMPAC, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, and Dixon Place, and abroad at GARAGE (Moscow) and the Architecture of Movement Festival (Yaroslavl, Russia). As a maker of dance films, Demyanenko was the recipient of a Dance Movies Commission by EMPAC and was nominated for the Dance on Camera Jury Prize for her work on kino-eye.  www.elenademyanenko.com