Public/Private: Performance

Date Range

a dancer with arms spread wide leaning to the side

Date and Time

Wed Feb 22, 2017 7:00pm

Part of the Exhibition

The performer's body is a site of public/private duality. Dancers train and perform under constant “surveillance” from teachers and audiences and willingly step into the gaze of watchful eyes. How does a performer negotiate what is seen, what is revealed as they place themselves under scrutiny? How do audiences negotiate the dancer’s body as object or subject? Has technology and social media marginalized the live body by transforming us all into a static image?
 
 The evening will include live performance by WWU dance faculty and students inspired by Arne Svenson’s “The Neighbors” followed by a screening Liz Gerring's “glacier”.
 
Liz Gerring, an acclaimed NY choreographer and recipient of the prestigious Jacob's Pillow Choreography Award, investigates the vulnerability and power of the performer in her work. Ms. Gerring’s work is about "looking in" on the vulnerability of the performer. The sparse, elegant yet very physical movement brings the viewer into the world of the performer by stripping away artifice and decoration. WWU has re-staged two of Ms. Gerring’s works: “she dreams in code” (2011) and “glacier” (2013).

 

Alastair Macaulay of The New York Times describes Liz Gerring's work as "full-bodied dancing that changes my breathing...This is engagingly here-and-now dancing; and that kinesthetic effect is something rare, even intoxicating."
 
Video excerpt of 'glacier'

 

Part of the simultaneous exhibitions of In the Open and Arne Svenson's The Neighbors at the Western Gallery.

 

 


 

Public/Private: Performance from WWU Dance on Vimeo.

 

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