Movement Research Studies Project: Dance and the Occupy Wall Street Movement, January 25, 2012.

This is a Movement Research Studies Project titled “Dance and the Occupy Movement,” organized by Abigail Levine. Panelists included Barbara Browning, Paloma McGregor, Clarinda MacLow, Edisa Weeks, and Daniel Lang-Levitsky. This event took place at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, January 25, 2012.

An excerpt from the Movement Research Festival Spring Brochure 2011 reads: “Exploring an expanded notion of choreography and how it is related to our social and political organization and discovery of ourselves as individuals working within a temporary collective… circling and questioning around ideas of a moving community.”

 

The New York City General Assembly Declaration of the Occupation reads, “Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.”

 

Participants in this Movement Research Studies Project on the topic of dance and Occupy Wall Street discussed several questions in an open conversation about the creative political movement. What are the points of contact between experimental, contemporary dance and the Occupy Movement? As spatial and embodied practice? As social investigation and organization? As improvisation and movement? As agents of change? How do and might these moving communities interact? How do we approach (public and private) space in New York City?

 

Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community.