Photo by Carrie Stern

On April 23rd, jill sigman/thinkdance gathered with 10+ movers, witnesses, and passerby for a continuation of the Motion Practice series with a special Earth Day Motion Practice as a part of #StreetArts2023 organized by Park to Park 103rd St. Movers participated in a 1-hour dance improvisation exploring the following questions: What is your relation to the ground? What is your relation to the environment? What is your relation to each other? What is your relation to the climate future you imagine?

Photos by Carrie Stern and Jill Sigman

Motion Practice is an informal series of pop-up public movement events that jill sigman/thinkdance started during the pandemic to facilitate connecting safely and remembering the power of moving together in public space. People are invited to be movers or witnesses, and movers work with a simple movement score that grounds us in connecting to land, to each other, and to other aspects of the site. 

On 103rd St. and Broadway, movers interacted with elements of the ground, street trees and plants, nearby chalk drawings, and a few witnesses turned movers. Movers were unexpectedly joined for a part of the improvisation by musician Skip LaPlante who utilized nearby materials like a traffic cone to make sound.

Photos by Merry Aronoff, Jill Sigman, and Carrie Stern

Following the improv, movers and witnesses gathered with Jill Sigman and special guest HK Dunston for wild edible tea and a co-facilitated discussion about climate futures, movement, and making meaning in our lives. HK is an urban planner, climate adaption researcher, and faculty member at School of Visual Arts (SVA) where she teaches a course called Imagining Climate Futures. 

Top photos by Merry Aronoff, bottom photo by Carrie Stern includes HK Dunston on the far left

On Saturday, September 18th, I was joined by dancers EmmaGrace Skove-Epes and Rishauna Zumberg in Version 2 of To Mend. We performed at the Amsterdam Eco-Arts Festival, a part of Park(ING) Day, an annual global event in which parking spaces are transformed into public places for people and art. This public program was presented by Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance and The Columbus-Amsterdam BID and offered informal community planting, a Native New York orientation, dance and music performances, poetry, participatory socially conscious muralling for kids, and family workshops.

To Mend is an iterative durational process of organizing and dancing with ceramics—a meditation on brokenness and how we will put the pieces together anew. It is part-performance part-installation; with care, we arrange a set of ceramic shards that I have made into a shapeshifting instrument that can be danced with and played. Sound and silence, movement and stillness, compose this reflection on slowness, loss, and repair, both personal and structural.

Photos below by Phyllis McCabe (bottom L) and Andrew Ingall (top L and R)

Photos by Phyllis McCabe (L) and Andrew Ingall (R)

To Mend (version 1) occurred on July 31st in Riverside Park with Kirstin Norderval and myself. Version 2 is an extension of the work into a varying site, where grassy ground is replaced by concrete and metal surroundings.

Photo by Andrew Ingall. Rishauna and EmmaGrace hold a sound object made from a long branch. Jill reaches her arms towards the background. A person is walking by as Jill reaches.

on the hillside late 2020

within a mound of dead leaves

tiny pink flowers

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“I was very drawn to one old large tree on the hillside and returned to it like an old friend… Beneath it and all the fallen leaves, I saw these delicate pink flowers. They seemed so life affirming in this year of so much death physical and otherwise.”

miriam borne

“Sometimes as I was moving the way a nearby plant seems to move, an urge would come up from within and I’d move the way my human body wanted to move—to unwind kinks and stuck places I usually tune out.”

Sarah

We’re in such a strange moment in time. A moment when community is so necessary yet difficult to feel.

When embodiment within community is often limited to faces on screens.

But to move together.

To respond together.

In our full bodies.

A moment in this moment of feeling full and being full and sensing full.

A moment to connect to reflect to be giddy and somber, to run, lean, vibrate,

and be so very still in the presence of so much stimuli.

A moment to reflect on the where and when we are and the how we got here.

Carolyn Hall

“During my dance, I danced with a tree, imagining my flight. Also, kind of fun, some squirrels came around and danced by my feet.”

G

On November 29th in Riverside Park, jill sigman/thinkdance gathered with some 25+ movers and passing witnesses for Motion Practice: a pop-up public movement event. Together, we danced for three hours, working through an improvisational movement score focused on relationships to the land, plant life, each other, architecture, and sky. This score has grown out of our live outdoor practice during the pandemic. Movers interacted with the park’s tactile landscape, integrating fallen leaves, branches, trees, fences, plants, and birds into their improvisations. We were connected by phone to another group of dancers on Zoom, all joining the same score in remote locations.

Thank you to everyone who attended Motion Practice: a pop-up public movement event with jill sigman/thinkdance in Riverside Park and on Zoom! Special thanks to Zoom facilitators Krishna Washburn and Stacy Lynn Smith, core dancers Dani Cole, Donna Costello, Carolyn Hall, Paty Lorena Solórzano, and Rishauna Zumberg, and park assistants Beau Banks, Sarah Cooley, and Lorena Jaramillo. Photo documentation by Beau Banks and Lorena Jaramillo.

Motion Practice: a pop-up public movement event was made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by LMCC. 

OCTOBER 30, 6-8PM
NYU Ten Huts Book Launch & Signing
Performance Studies Studio (#612)
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway- 6th Floor

Tisch Open Arts in cooperation with Tisch Performance Studies and the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research will host this FREE event. I will be joined by performance studies scholar Andre Lepecki who contributed an essay to the volume.

https://tisch.nyu.edu/performance-studies/events/js-ten-huts

NOV 2, 7PM
Princeton Women’s Network and Princeton Association of NYC- an event for alumni
Ten Huts: Seven Years of Building with Trash
A Book Event with Jill Sigman
Advance registration required:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pwn-of-nyc-panyc-ten-huts-with-artist-jill-sigman-89-98-tickets-38887917809

NOV 7, 6:30PM
Movement Research Studies Project:
Interdisciplinary responses to the political moment with Pramila Vasudevan, Piotr Szyhalski, Salome Asega, and Jill Sigman
A facilitated dialogue about the responsiveness of artistic practice to pressing sociopolitical and ecological concerns of our time.
https://movementresearch.org/event/6712

NOV 15, 7PM 
Wesleyan University Ten Huts Book Reading– a book reading and launch with Jill Sigman and Ten Huts contributor philosopher Elise Springer.
RJ Julia Wesleyan University Book Store
413 Main St
Middletown, CT 06457  FREE

https://eaglet.wesleyan.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?EventDetailId=79802

DEC 5, 7PM
Gibney Dance Center, NYC
Ten Huts: Seven Years of Choreographing with Trash
A Book Event with Jill Sigman and Eva Yaa Asantewaa

At this celebratory event choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and agent of change Jill Sigman will read from her new book Ten Huts, recently released by Wesleyan University Press. She will be joined by interlocutor Eva Yaa Asantewaa, dance critic, writer and contributor to the volume. The evening will include readings, dialogue, and some special interactive exercises for the Gibney community.

https://gibneydance.org/event/ten-huts-seven-years-of-choreographing-with-trash/

Books will be for sale at most events. You can also order online at:
http://www.upne.com/0819576897.html