The Fierce Urgency of Now: A Space to Process the Election

The Fierce Urgency of Now: 

A Space to Process the Election

Tuesday, November 29

7pm to 9pm

FREE/OPEN TO ALL

Initiated by Jill Sigman and Co-Facilitated by Marguerite Hemmings, Joshua Hall, Mary Suk, David King, and other artists and thinkers 

Hosted by Gibney Dance

FREE and open to people of all races, ethnicities, ages, and nationalities, artists and non-artists

The Fierce Urgency of Now is a public dialogue event for artists, activists, friends, colleagues, and affiliates. Many of us are still feeling the need for space and community in which to process the election and its ramifications. Artists and activists are simultaneously part of multiple vulnerable populations; now more than ever, we are concerned about racism, sexism, visas and immigration, access to healthcare, rights and safety for queer and trans people, disability access, affordable housing, financial stability, and so much more. This loosely structured public event creates a “temporary commons” in which to think, talk, wonder, question, imagine, and brainstorm. It is conceived as an open dialogue (not a strategy meeting or a place to determine actionable steps, although if those emerge, we’ll welcome them too). One event can’t do everything. The Fierce Urgency of Now is intended to be part of a collective beginning, which hopefully leads to future dialogues, more focused groups, strategy building, task forces, etc.

For more information, click here.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

jill sigman/thinkdance presents "Weed Heart" at Gibney

Jill Sigman in her performance of Weed Heart
and below with Katrina De Wees
(photos: Scott Shaw)

Unruly.

That word often crops up when we talk about weeds.

And about certain people.

I'll use it here to describe both the artist Jill Sigman (jill sigman/thinkdance) and what she has wrought at Gibney Dance Center: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center as choreographer and as Gibney's first Community Action Artist in Residence.

Her project, Weed Heart, is an unruly yet sociable thing of sculptured plantings, tea servings, soup servings, community conversations, free-ranging ideas, music and movement in intimate space. It willfully sprawls from Gibney's gallery lounge area to its tiny ground-level Studio A and, ultimately, beyond the center's front door.

Weed Heart is both a cozy, rather retro (think: hippie era) installation, a commons where anyone can drop by and hang out (the gallery lounge), and a performance where only a little over thirty onlookers can fit (Studio A). At the evening performance, those thirty or so get soothed by a weedy brew of tea, light and delicious red lentil soup made by Katrina De Wees and luminously textured electronic and vocal energy from composer Kristin Norderval. Seated in a single ring around the space, those thirty or so observe an abstract representation of the path that Sigman took--from earnest seeking and bewilderment to soul-felt awareness--as she sought to learn what common weeds can teach her.

How they communicate with themselves and, potentially, with us. How they survive. How they foster healing. How cultures have regarded and interacted with them over time. How our disdain for weeds parallels our similar ignorance about humans we consider to be unlike ourselves and less worthy.

Working with living creatures whose existence depends upon deep connection below the surface--or, at least, attachment to dug-up portions of earth--she has tapped into sediments of her family legacy and of New York history. Weed Heart is haunted by the displacement of indigenous people, the brutality of slavery, the appropriation of what was once land available for common access.

As Sigman reminds us, during a video in her performance, when we buy our sports bras next door at Modell's or park our cars in the lot east of Gibney, we do so over the remains of enslaved Africans. Yes, Weed Heart is packed with all of this--and more. Sigman works tend to be threaded with everything and every interconnection engaging her mind--from environmental sustainability to The Movement for Black Lives. It's a fertile mind, and you just plug into something that resonates with you and hang on as best you can.

Weed Heart, the dance and the dancing, seems born of age-old ritual. Here Sigman takes on the trappings of the plant kingdom. She has tied a large, heart-shaped Paulownia leaf around her face (and, much later, reveals its remarkable source). Brighter green leaves--and a little rose-pink rhinestone heart--decorate her dark-blue hoodie. One cannot look at that hoodie, somehow, and not think of Trayvon Martin's and--when her head and face are completely swathed--the Muslim hijab and niqab.

Sigman's movements--often angular, jutting and jarring--have an alien feel, and Norderval's soundscore draws us through metallic or insect-like dimensions that elude easy identification. It's the role of the ritualist, after all, to take us far from Kansas. Sigman does this, yet--with assists from Norderval and De Wees--she shows that "strange new worlds"--removed and hidden and strange and new to us, at least--can be places of graciousness and mercy.

Jill Sigman on Chambers Street
(photo: Scott Shaw)

Weed Heart performances continue through Saturday, September 10 and Wednesday-Saturday, September 14-17, all at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Related event: Weed Heart: People, Plants, and Social Justice panel discussion on Sunday, September 25, 4-5pm. Click here for information.

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (enter at 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan

(map/directions)

If you like what you're reading,

subscribe to InfiniteBody!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Infinitebody

Jill Sigman's field of dance

In Jill Sigman's work, the art of dance and the greater world out there are not strangers to each other. Her choreographic and visual creations arise from inquiry into the nature of humanity's complicated relationship with and severe impact on our environment. Now last days/first field--her latest work, presented at The Invisible Dog through tomorrow evening--takes this connection a step further. This contemporary ritual brings the living world inside where it can no longer be ignored or abstracted.

last days/first field takes place on a long, rectangular space surrounded by audience on three sides; beyond the fourth end, composer-singer Kristin Norderval holds forth with her Mac and her ringing, exhilarating vocals. Sigman and several other women--Hadar Ahuvia, Corinne Cappelletti, Donna Costello, Sally Hess, Irene Hsi and Paloma McGregor--wear costumes made of an elaborate patchwork of fabrics and plastics. (Given Sigman's penchant for recycling trash for art, I'm guessing designer kymkym formed these constructions from discarded material.) Their movements suggest a massive, repetitive, accumulating process and arc of labor--forcefully mechanical, like threshers, and alert, assertively present in the space, clearly transformative. Since they surge and gallop so close to where we sit, we can't help but feel their strength. When they bind their legs to long, slender branches with rope and strips of cloth, reduced to rolling side-to-side, we feel life turned even more driven by that temporary confinement.

As they move, another dancer, Devika Wickremesinghe, circumnavigates the space, carrying boxes of little plantings suspended from a long tree branch or encased in pouches stitched into the front and rear of her gown. This elegant Spirit of Time slowly, very slowly, makes her way around as other dancers channel the dynamic inner processes of soil, roots and shoots.

That larger, outer world grows increasingly visible in the Invisible Dog space. The dancers construct perfect rows of rich, black soil and carefully plant little green seedlings along the ridge of these rows. Their tending of this field, along with Norderval's music, can induce serenity--as can the proffered cups of hot, sweet tea and the invitation to join little groups of performers, fellow audience members, farmers, educators and activists for a friendly chat.

jill sigman/thinkdance's last days/first field continues this evening and tomorrow evening with performances at 7:30pm. Be prepared for a roughly two-hour experience (sans intermission). For information and ticketing, click here.

The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street (between Smith and Court Streets), Brooklyn
(map/directions)

This Earth, our home: Siobhan Burke interviews Jill Sigman

SOON THE EARTH WILL BE IN THE SQUARE
Jill Sigman with Siobhan Burke
by Siobhan Burke, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2013

AUDIO PREVIEW: Jill Sigman

Above/below: Jill Sigman in Hut #5
(Photo: Lindsay Comstock)

The Edges of Performance

A workshop led by Jill Sigman

Saturday-Sunday, June 4-5 (2-5pm)

Location: The Border

1 Grattan Street, Studio 221, Bushwick, Brooklyn

(Take L train to Morgan Avenue)

$15/workshop day

from Hut #5 (Photo: Lindsay Comstock)

 AUDIO PREVIEW

Dancer-choreographer Jill Sigman

talks about The Edges of Performance

Click to play [Play]
(6:32)

Where do the edges of performance lie? Does performing rely on a state of mind, a mode of presentation, a kind of activity, an audience? We will investigate these edges beginning with fine-grained movement explorations that are fueled by the visual and aural fields around us. We will then let ourselves be guided by touch, task, and taste, and eventually arrive at explorations of such activities as planting cooking, or building. We will test out the borders of performing through these activities—performing for ourselves, each other, the space, and the street below.

It is encouraged to take both days of the workshop for a more complete investigation, but it is possible to take one day as a discrete experience.

This workshop is part of the ongoing series CLASSCLASSCLASS. It also coincides with Arts in Bushwick Open Studios.

For more information, 

click here.

Jill Sigman asks questions through the medium of the body. Trained in classical ballet, modern dance, art history, and analytic philosophy, Sigman has been making dances and performance installations since the early 90s. In 1998, she founded her company jill sigman/thinkdance as a vehicle for her performance experiments. In the same year she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. Equally comfortable on a proscenium stage or crawling in the dirt armed with fluorescent waterguns, Sigman transforms deceptively simple actions into explorations of politics, gender, and society; her work currently exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual installation. Sigman’s dances have been produced by such New York City venues as Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Dancing in the Streets, and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center. Internationally, her work has been shown in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and India. As a teacher, Sigman offers workshops nationally at colleges and universities; she has been a member of the dance faculty at Princeton University, a movement tutor at the Imaginary Academy in Groznjan, Croatia, a frequent guest teacher in Belgium, and a professor of aesthetics and performance theory at Brooklyn College and The New School. She has recently been teaching in Oslo, Norway, and is currently at work on a multi-site project about huts and sustainable living. See: www.thinkdance.org

Learn more about Jill Sigman in an interview with dancer-writer Siobhan Burke on her blog, phase.shift and on Performance Ritual, a new blog Burke shares with Isabella Bruno. Click here and here.

Garbage endures

Researchers Explore Growing Ocean Garbage Patches
by Lindsey Hoshaw, The New York Times, November 9, 2009

jill sigman/thinkdance's Our Lady of Detritus project

Excerpts of performance at Solar One, Manhattan

Sigman thinks about a lesson from Obama

state of the art
by Jill Sigman, Dispatches from, January 21, 2009

Volunteers requested: jill sigman thinkdance

jill sigman/thinkdance asks questions through the medium of the body. Conceptual performance that grows out of physical experience, the work of choreographer Jill Sigman exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual installation. Jill sigman/thinkdance will soon premiere ZsaZsaLand, a darkly comic cultural commentary on decadence and decay, commercialism and cultural cannibalism.

jill sigman/thinkdance is gearing up for a month of performances and other activities in February at Office Ops in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We are seeking volunteers to help with our postcard mailing on Thursday and Friday Jan 22-23 (mailing party will take place on the Upper West Side); volunteers to help with postcard distribution any time from Jan 22-Jan 26; volunteers to help out at performances (Feb 6-8, 13-15, 20-22, arrive at 7pm, leave at 10pm).

We are also looking for office paper shreddings for our upcoming performance/installation. If you work in an office that shreds and can collect shredding, we would be very grateful!!!

When: Late January-February

Contact Jill Sigman at thinkdance@attglobal.net.
See our Web site for further information on the company and upcoming show.

*****
For instructions on how to submit your own request for arts volunteers, please click here.

Dance dance evolution

Dispatches from

Dancer-choreographer Jill Sigman (of jill sigman/thinkdance) offers insights into the wild, unruly, beautiful thing that is dance in its development through the wild, unruly, beautiful things that are body and mind. Follow her blog's reports on her work-in-progress, ZsaZsaLand, and other matters, here.

A preview trip to "ZsaZsaLand"

Please join me on Saturday, November 22, for a post-performance discussion with choreographer Jill Sigman and the creative team on her work-in-progress, ZsaZsaLand, at Dance Theater Workshop.

As part of DTW's Studio Series, Sigman will be showing excerpts from ZsaZsaLand, which is slated for premiere in 2009, on Friday, November 21 and Saturday, November 22 at 7:30pm. The piece includes sound by joro de boro and is performed by Toby Billowitz, Donna Costello, Jill Sigman, and special guests.

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th Street (7th-8th Avenues)
Box office: 212.924.0077
Suggested donation: $5

jill sigman/thinkdance

New blog from Jill Sigman

Tune into the alchemical, shamanistic properties of egg shells and Cheese Doodles at Jill Sigman's new blog, Dispatches from jill sigman/thinkdance. It's bound to be colorful and thought/dance-provoking!

Dancer artist Jill Sigman announces a new workshop

MOVEMENT & THEATER: The Micro-Frontier
For the past 10 years I have been developing a specific improvisational practice based on the way subtle skeletal shifts make for big changes in what we perceive as character. This 3 hour workshop will explore the micro-frontier where physical questions, movement puzzles, and fine-grained improvisation shade into theater

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11th

2-5PM

Special Introductory Fee: $20
Space is extremely limited! Registration required.

Please RSVP to:

thinkdance@attglobal.net or 212/865 2568

(The studio is just steps away from the Morgan Ave. stop on the L train. Upon registering we will send you directions.)

Stay tuned for news of other workshops or email us to let us know what kinds of explorations you're interested in!

A Postmodern Passage

(Editor's note: Recently, I was talking with dancer-choreographer Jill Sigman about some of her past and upcoming travels, and I invited her to send me some of her journaling. The following piece, written in 2005, is one of what I hope will be a series of reflections from this searching and provocative dance artist.)

(Author’s note: I wrote this short piece a day after I returned from India, early in 2005. I had wanted to record my initial impressions while still in that transition zone between there and here.)

A Postmodern Passage

by Jill Sigman, guest contributor

Still jetlagged and dreamlike, I am unpacking many things: a suitcase of brightly colored scarves, a mental album of arresting images, the convoluted body language of a stranger who is aware of being a stranger, and a gnawing sense of my own cultural specificity. I open my closet and rediscover the blue suede jacket and red cowboy boots of the “real” me, the post-Godard underpinnings of androgynous femininity, and a strong conviction that the avant-garde isn’t just half-baked classicism after all. I am home.

I am a choreographer and performer, a person whose life and expression revolve around movement, and I visited India as a physical tourist. I wanted to encounter the physical experiences and dance forms of a radically different culture, to alight in a new physicality and allow that experience to trickle into my movement language and improvisational process. As an invited guest of the Kri Foundation in New Delhi, I had the good fortune to sample Kathak and Bharat Natyam, engage in artistic dialogue and studio exploration with Bharat Natyam dancer Rama Vaidyanathan, perform at the American Center as a guest of the American Embassy, lecture on my work at the India Habitat Centre, and meet many wonderful artists, arts administrators, and cultural consumers.

It will take time to unpack such a packed five weeks, to discover how all the sights and sounds and unfamiliar movements will find their way into my choreographic work. But what struck me most about this postmodern passage is not what anyone expected to strike me, or presented to me as cultural offering. I was amazed by the theatricality of ordinary life— the Christmas lights blinking on three different tempos in a dimly lit Hindu temple, the Khajal-rimmed eyes of babies in starched lace bonnets and boys’ trousers, the street theater of tourist-trade holy men, the heightened reality of poojas and wedding processions…

I am fascinated by the superposition of performance and reality, the ways we are simultaneously performing and also “really there”, and how sometimes in moments of performance epiphany we choose to reveal that duality to our viewers. I was most recently reminded of this when I was injured a week before Pulling the Wool and proceeded to perform for two weekends on crutches. The crutches became a prop, an icon, a sinister device for underlining themes that were already present in my work. But they were also real; I couldn’t walk without them. And I was glad to share that duality with my viewers—to exist together in a charged space sharing that multi-layered awareness.

In India I saw performance everywhere: in the men singing “Chai—Chai Chai” up and down the aisles of the train; in the women in black crossing the open plaza of Agra’s Jami Masjid mosque; in the rowboats on the Ganga that reminded me of my own site-specific performance on Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal; and in the postmodern improvisations of entering and exiting, movement and stillness, of Hindu temple-goers.

I was looking through a different lens, and I was aware of how specific my lens was to what I am. I am an American, a New Yorker, a woman, an inheritor of 60’s ideals and experiments, a choreographer, a philosopher, an activist. I see structured movement improvisation in people visiting temples. I see a theater set in Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar astronomical observatory. I see sculptural installations in piles of vermillion. I see gender-bending cross-dressing in the outfits of kohl-eyed children. And I see the World Trade Center in the cremation fires of Varanasi’s burning ghats. During my visit, I knew that what I was seeing was embedded in a completely different cultural context. And yet I was inextricably embedded in mine.

This became clear with regard to my artistic work. My ways of making and seeing dance were strange to people and the fingerprints of postmodern dance, pedestrianism, and experiment were invisible to them. My dances use a movement vocabulary which I invent. Their meaning is not connected to a text or story. They involve significant amounts of improvisation and chance. And they are more than just movement; they include their environments. Western culture may be ubiquitous, but it is not universal. My work was not transparent in India.

This, I realized, is what cross-cultural dialogue is all about. It is not simply looking with admiration at the offerings of another culture, admiring the diversity of things in the world. Rather, it is looking with curiosity and wonder at the lenses through which we see each other’s offerings-- holding those lenses up to the light and watching how the world is refracted.


(c)2005, Jill Sigman

Jill Sigman is a choreographer, performer, and Artistic Director of jill sigman/thinkdance, an experimental dance company that raises questions through the medium of the body. Sigman also writes about dance and art theory. In 2003, she left 200 texts about why she makes art around NYC--in taxis, phone booths, public bathrooms and supermarket freezers.