Instrument, created in an experimental collaboration with three choreographers – Miguel Gutierrez, Chris Black, and Amy Seiwert, exploits the vibrancy of the body in the ever-dying moment of live performance and strives to enact, expose and undermine the roles of dancer as workhorse and choreographer as auteur. The artist’s relationship to authorship is a major theme, as is the dancing body as translator, container of knowledge and preserver of culture. Instrument calls upon ballet hero Rudolph Nureyev, Performance Art heroes of the sixties and seventies, and current discussions about “the body as archive” to create a collage of iconic movement, historical anecdote, and personal narrative.
Instrument is not merely a collaboration between three choreographers and one performer, but an exploration of that very relationship, examining what happens in the moments when ideas are transferred from artist to artist, when movement is translated from body to body.
Praise for Instrument:
“This is perhaps the finest performance I’ve seen all year, by any artist in any medium.” – Paul Parrish, Bay Area Reporter
- Premiere: CounterPulse & de Young Museum, San Francisco 2012
- Performance, creation & writing: Monique Jenkinson
- Choreography & direction: Monique Jenkinson, Chris Black, Miguel Gutierrez & Amy Seiwert
- Costume: Andrea Cammarosano
- Lighting: Tiffani Snow
- Video Documentation: Loren Robertson Productions