photo: Michelle Blioux
For the last few months I have been at work on a brand new project, Instrument, a solo performance created in an experimental process with three choreographers: Chris Black, Miguel Gutierrez and Amy Seiwert. Instigated by discussions with curators at the de Young Museum during my fellowship there, especially about their current exhibition Rudolph Nureyev: a Life in Dance, I invited the three choreographers to create movement on my body that I shaped into the final piece. The work looks at the performing artist’s slippery relationship to authorship and authority; and at dancing as an act of translation and creation. It has been a thrill to put my work in the hands of these incredibly talented artists. Our studio process has been incredibly rich and crazily fun.
Please join me to see the results.
November 29 – December 9 Thu – Sun 8PM CounterPULSE
More information below – Tickets here
Instrument, the new solo by Monique Jenkinson exploits the vibrancy of the body in the ever-dying moment of live performance. Created in an experimental collaboration with three choreographers – Miguel Gutierrez, Chris Black, and Amy Seiwert – Instrument enacts, exposes and undermines the roles of dancer as workhorse and choreographer as auteur. The artist’s slippery relationship to authority and authorship is a major theme, as is the dancing body as translator, container of knowledge and preserver of culture.
In her unique voice, dancer/performance artist Jenkinson (aka Fauxnique), calls upon ballet hero Rudolph Nureyev, Performance Art heroes of the 60s and 70s, and current discussions about ‘the body as archive’ to create a collage of iconic movement, historical anecdote, and personal narrative. Instrument highlights the intersections of ballet and post-modern endurance performance – especially with regard to pushing the body to, through, and from exhaustion to create art.
With dramaturgy by Selby Wynn Schwartz, costumes by Andrea Cammarosano, light by Tiffani Snow, and sound design by Marc Kate.
In conjunction with Rudolph Nureyev: A Life in Dance at the de Young Museum, and supported by the de Young Museum’s Artist Fellows Program and partner organizations CounterPULSE and Dancers’ Group. Instrument is made possible in part by the generosity of the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation.