jill sigman/thinkdance celebrates Twenty fifth anniversary with world premiere

For 25 years, jill sigman/thinkdance has labored with our bodies, discovered supplies and various geographies to check a future wherein we reconnect with the pure world and one another within the service of private, communal and environmental therapeutic. This June 21-23, at Gibney 280, jill sigman/thinkdance celebrates its milestone 25^th anniversary with the world premiere of Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) and a sequence of pre-show occasions and conversations at Gibney.

Persevering with the corporate’s motion, sound and visible analysis practices, Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) is a rigorous ritual-based course of grounded in an exploration of our interconnectedness to land and one another. It grows out of Jill Sigman’s a few years of creating dances and installations about environmental and social justice points. Constructing on this, Re-Seeding asks what it may imply for people to “re-seed” themselves on land the place they don’t seem to be native — land that has been colonized and occupied — in a method that strikes towards therapeutic. What would it not imply to grasp the previous and aspire towards collective well-being? What can these residing in diaspora study from vegetation that root themselves in new locations and contribute to ecosystems in optimistic methods? In essence, it’s a seek for a greater solution to stay on and with this land and its historical past.

For Sigman, Re-Seeding is without delay private and political. “It has its origins in my relationship to New York as a settler born on conventional Munsee Lenape homeland in what’s now referred to as Brooklyn,” mentioned Sigman. “By the interrelated practices of dancing, researching, foraging wild vegetation and dealing with clay, I attempt to metabolize a lineage of Jewish grief, genocide and displacement on land the place that very same lineage makes me a part of a historical past of colonial trauma. And on the similar time, that lineage of violence now heartbreakingly reinvents itself and inflicts genocide on the folks of Gaza. Re-Seeding asks how we break these patterns.”

As a part of the creative course of, the dancers engaged in a sequence of activations at completely different websites, researched their very own household lineages, and met with Indigenous artists and activists, to expertise the entanglement of their very own embodied histories of displacement with the histories of the land they rehearsed on. This explicit iteration of Re-Seeding is carried out in an area that overlooks the historic website of the general public commons of colonial New York Metropolis. As with all of Sigman’s work, the research-gathering has formed Re-Seeding’s multilayered vocabulary and underlying rhythm, vitality and logic. The piece consists of detailed improvisational scores that, taken collectively, kind a ritual calling for deep listening, relationality and transformation.

The stay motion and sound scores are created and carried out by dancers Dani “dan” Cole, Donna Costello, zavé martohardjono, J’nae Simmons, Stacy Lynn Smith and Sigman. ReSeeding incorporates a stay rating for voice, electronics and percussion by Kristin Norderval (composer, voice, laptop computer), Gustavo Aguilar (percussion), and Miguel Frasconi (glass), and stay portray with plant pigments by visible artist Paula Walters Parker. Dramaturgical help is by Marguerite Hemmings, ceramics by Jill Sigman and contributions to the method by Amala’ika Rinyire.

Performances are June 21-23. The performances on Friday and Saturday might be adopted by a dialogue with the artists. Following Sunday’s efficiency, there might be a 25^th anniversary celebration with mild bites, tea and firm memorabilia. Pre-show gatherings within the Gibney Gallery might be held June 21 and 22, at 6pm. Be a part of jill sigman/thinkdance for wild edible tea in an informal setting the place friends can meet a captivating array of students, activists and artists whose work intersects with the corporate’s initiatives, and listen to their concepts about environmental justice, vegetation, waste and restore.