MASP

10 am – 10:30 am

Introduction with Adriano Pedrosa

10:30 am – 12:30 pm

THOMAS J. LAX | All Together Now
Why do we say “dance” when we really mean “care,” “precariousness,” “word of mouth” or “the flood”? A discussion of three recent projects at MoMA, New York, related to “dance”: the exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, co-organized with Ana Janevski and Martha Joseph; the book Modern Dance: Ralph Lemon; and un-acquirable work by Arthur Jafa. 

ISMAEL IVO | Eat Me Up! – Performance as Cultural Cannibalism
In this presentation, I intend to expose my own trajectory and experience. I call myself an “anthropophagist artist,” someone that goes on the search of assimilating the largest amount possible of information, techniques, and experiences to develop my own identity; plunging in the work of great dancers and choreographers of different styles, masters of language like Kazuo Ohno, coming from dance and theater. My interest and fascination with visual arts led me to meet artists like Yoko Ono, Marina Abramović, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, among many others.

CARMEN LUZ | The Black Images of Dance
This presentation will ponder on the persistence of colonial relations in the world of dance, and the ensuing responses of Black artists to it. Some of the axes passing through the life and work of such artists are ancestry, spirituality, exploration, oppression, exclusion, stereotypy, diasporic reinvention, the fight for “fair representations” of the Black body, as well as the access to spaces and statuses historically denied to them. The works of such artists will be critically approached, along with their trajectories repleted with longings for visibility, survival strategies, and claims for recognition. These are the issues that currently mobilize considerable efforts aimed at making a real, permanent, and broad presence, participation, and perspective of Black artists in academic research and formal education, as well as in the thinking, production, and reception of scenic dance.

2pm – 4pm 

MATHIEU COPELAND | Choreographing Exhibitions
To choreograph an exhibition is to envisage exhibition-making through the prism of choreography, by means of the terms that compose an exhibition: score, body, space, time, and memory. To curate an exhibition encompasses the score that enables its realisation, the bodies that make it be, the location it inhabits, the time taken for its experience, and the memory that remains once the exhibition course has run. To choreograph an exhibition is to affirm a criticism of the (art) “objects,” and of the “object” created as the result of an accumulation of objects. To choreograph an exhibition is to envisage both an exhibition in a moment of time and the exhibition of a moment of time. To choreograph an exhibition is to confront the ephemeral nature of movements. The materiality of a gesture raises the question of the memory of an artwork, and thus of its exhibition.

CLÁUDIA MÜLLER | Displacements of Contemporary Dance: Towards a Conceptual Condition
This discussion focalizes on the dialogue between contemporary dance and visual arts from the 1990s on and diving into the new configurations and discussions present in the works of artists that transit between these two realms. It seeks to think dance as contemporary art, asking itself about its own condition: what builds and defines it according to these terms? The relations between contemporary dance and conceptualism are traced by observing works that, reliquishing the formalism and the pure aesthetic exercise, intend to add something in terms of conceiving art and questioning its own nature. To rethink the conventions of dance itself, the model of spectacle, as well as the spaces and forms of visibility are the main issues at stake. More specifically, it approaches the works of Wagner Schwartz (Volta Redonda, 1972-) and the artistic production of the author herself to think about such relations, claiming a conceptual condition for contemporary dance in such works.

JULIA BRYAN-WILSON | List, Draw, Scrawl / Walk, Run, Jog
This paper investigates the varied use of the score across 1960s and 1970s dance in the United States to convey pedestrian motion. Looking at how a range of choreographers notated their actions, utilizing the score as both a tool of composition and as a memory aid, Julia Bryan-Wilson discusses how “everyday” movements were tracked, depicted, and absorbed into the discrete worlds of both art and sport. 

CARMEN LUZ
As an artist of dance, theater, and cinema, she composes, acts, and directs face-to-face scenic works (of dance, theater, and performance), as well as audiovisual pieces (documentary cinema, dance videos, and installations). Works professionally as an independent researcher, consultant, and teacher in domains of audiovisual and contemporary practices of dance and theater. Her research goes through the cultural and artistic productions of Black people. Currently, she is working on the research and development of her next documentary on Black Brazilian women in dance. Since 1994, she is the founder, artistic director, and choreographer of Cia. Étnica de Dança e Teatro.

CLÁUDIA MÜLLER
An artist whose projects approach dance, performance, and video. PhD candidate and holder of a Master’s degree in Arts from UERJ (2012). Teacher of the Dance course of Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU). Worked for dance companies in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and in Germany (1990-2000). In 2000, she started to develop her own works, presented in festivals and art centers in Brazil, South America, Europe, and Africa. In 2017, she was part of the curatorial team of Bienal Sesc de Dança, in charge of the educational initiatives of the event. She was also the curator of Modos de Existir 8: Dançando com Artistas-etc, held at Sesc Santo Amaro in 2018.

ISMAEL IVO
Artistic director of Balé da Cidade de São Paulo. A protagonist of the European dance theater scene, he worked as the choreographer of Márcia Haydée and collaborated with Pina Bausch. From 1997 to 2000, he was the director of the dance company of the National German Theater in Weimar. He is one of the founders of ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival. Between 2005 and 2012, he was the director of the International Contemporary Dance Festival and the Dance Department of the Venice Biennale, where he started the Center for Dance Research Arsenale della Danza. He was also a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna and the Free University of Berlin.

JULIA BRYAN-WILSON
Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also directs the Arts Research Center. She is the author of three books, most recently Fray: Art and Textile Politics, which was the winner of the 2018 Robert Motherwell Book Award. Bryan-Wilson has written several influential articles on dance, including “Practicing Trio A,” and “Simone Forti Goes to the Zoo,” both of which were published in OCTOBER. In 2018-19, she is the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor at Williams College.

MATHIEU COPELAND
A freelance independent curator since 2003, Copeland has curated the exhibition VOIDS, A Retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and the Kunsthalle, in Bern, and edited the celebrated anthology VOIDS. Among many others, he curated A Choreographed Exhibition, Soundtrack for an Exhibition (2006), Alan Vega (2009), Gustav Metzger (2013), and A Mental Mandala (2013). He initiated and curated the series A Spoken Word Exhibitions (2007), Reprise (2011 – ongoing) and the Exhibitions to Hear Read (2010 – ongoing, presented in 2013 at MoMA, New York). Copeland edited the critically acclaimed anthology and manifest publication Choreographing Exhibitions. In 2017, he co-edited the radical anthology The Anti-Museum.

THOMAS J. LAX
Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA since 2014. He recently co-organized the exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done (2018), organized or co-organized projects including Modern Dance: Ralph Lemon (2016) and Maria Hassabi: PLASTIC (2016), among others. Previously, he worked at the Studio Museum in Harlem where he organized several exhibitions. Thomas writes regularly for a variety of publications, is on the board of Danspace Project, and is a faculty member at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts. Thomas holds degrees in Africana Studies and Art History from Brown University and Columbia University.