Impossible Tasks: Writing with/as Dance

Thursday, October 12, 2023 at 5:00pm
South Gallery Reading Room, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery

FREE! No experience necessary.

In advance of the U.S. premiere of Nacera Belaza’s L’Onde in the CFA Theater (Friday, October 13 and Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 7pm), Nora Raine Thompson ’15, along with collaborator and dance artist Chloë Engel, present a 90-minute lecture-demonstration and workshop on writing with/as dance. This project evolves from Thompson's personal experience of dancing with Belaza at Danspace Project in New York in 2018, and charts Thompson's attempt of the impossible task Belaza gave to her dancers of "being sound." Sinking into questions of intention and projection in the entangled processes of dancing, thinking, and writing, Thompson and Engel will invite attendees to explore embodied experiments and discuss approaches to witnessing dance, speaking from the muddled relation of being simultaneously performers, writers, and friends. At the same time, they will invite the audience to experiment with crossing between the media of writing, movement, and sound.

Nora Raine Thompson ’15 is a writer, dance-maker, and performer who experiments with ways of gently dismantling constructions of selfhood. She has choreographed for theater, created and produced solo and collaborative work, and taught improvisation workshops. In addition to her artistic work, Thompson has held dramaturgical and administrative roles with Eiko Otake, Abrons Arts Center, Ballez, and Danspace Project. Thompson’s writing on performance has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Enthusiast, and Danspace Project’s Journal. Thompson received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and is currently a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York University. 

chloë engel is a transdisciplinary choreographer and early-childhood educator based in lenape-hoking territory (aka Brooklyn, New York). Their choreographic work explores ritual, lineages of Madness, nostalgia, and family.

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Dance Workshop with Choreographer Nacera Belaza
Sunday, October 15, 2023 from Noon to 2pm
Cross Street Dance Studio, 160 Cross Street, Middletown
FREE!

Explore the fundamental notions in choreographer Nacera Belaza's work in this two-hour dance workshop. No experience necessary.