FUTURESHOCK, From Wall to Floor, Flip it, and Reverse It

This workshop takes its impetus from the relationship between choreography and visual art performance and a Missy Elliot song, "Work it." Missy goes, "Is it worth it, let me work it. I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it."
Not since the 1960's have we seen such an overlap between the art world and the dance world, as we see happening today. With "performance" being the new catch-all phrase, boundaries are dissolving both in the way artists are creating their work and the way institutions are assigning resources. In this workshop, we will introduce ourselves to past and current choreographic practices in the visual art world as well as a look at how visual art ideas are informing contemporary choreography, dance, and performance. Then, we will use this departure to make things we are not sure we can describe yet. We are not afraid to dance, sleep, sing, draw, rearrange, pontificate, hallucinate, conceptualise, destroy, and/or invent. Maybe we are afraid a little, but even so, we will work it!



Trajal Harrell
Trajal Harrell (Dancer-Choreographer) is a New York City-based artist. His work has been presented In New York and the U.S. at many venues including The Kitchen, The American Realness Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts- Boston, Danspace Project, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, Dance Mission (San Francisco, CA), City University of New York’s Martin Segal Theater and Proshansky Auditorium, and Cornell University, among others. Internationally, his work has toured in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Croatia, and Mexico.

A graduate of Yale University, he has been an artist-in-residence at CDC Toulouse, The Institute of Contemporary Arts (Boston), PACT Zollverein, Workspace Brussels, The White Oak Residency and Dance Center, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Movement Research, Bennington College, Wp Zimmer (Antwerp, Belgium), Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival, Workspace Brussels, Tanzhaus Dusseldorf, TanzWerkstatt-Berlin, Skite 2010 (Caen, France), CCN de Montpellier Languedoc-Rousillon, CCN de Franche-Comté à Belfort, and CNDC Angers.

In 2008, he was appointed co-artistic mentor for the DanceWeb programme at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival. He has also been active in artist-led curatorial and educational initiatives at Movement Research and Danspace Project in New York. Currently, he is director of MR’s special projects and finishing his tenure as the guest artist editor-in-chief of The Movement Research Performance Journal. At Danspace Project he recently curated a six-week festival "certain difficulties, certain joy" as part of Danspace Project’s Platforms 2010 as well as led a choreographic lab, The Adventure, based on the one he participated in led by Mårten Spångberg at ImPulsTanz in 2006.

He has created five full-length works: "Notes on Less than Zero", "Showpony", "Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (S)" and "Twenty Looks…(XS"); and most recently, "(M)imosa aka Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M)", co-authored with Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, and Marlene Freitas. He has also shown work in visual art contexts such as The New Museum, The Margulies Art Warehouse (Miami), The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Art Basel-Miami Beach, where he collaborated with Assume Vivid Astro Focus. His ongoing projects, "Tickle the Sleeping Giant" and "The Ambient Piece" have been shown in galleries in New York and Berlin. Currently, he is working on "Twenty Looks…(L)" and a new work in collaboration with visual artist Sarah Sze that will premiere at The ICA Boston in November 2011.