Moriah Evans, Remains Persist, 2022, Performance Space New York, NY. Pictured: Lizzie Feidelson, Sarah Beth Percival, Anh Vo, Varinia Canto Vila. Photo: Rachel Papo.
Moriah Evans, Remains Persist, 2022, Performance Space New York, NY. Pictured: Lizzie Feidelson, Sarah Beth Percival, Anh Vo, Varinia Canto Vila. Photo: Rachel Papo.
This winter, New York-based artist and choreographer Moriah Evans will spend two weeks at the Renaissance Society with a small ensemble of dancers. Together they will present a new work for this singular exhibition space. For this expanded edition of the Intermissions series, which features a longer time frame than usual, Evans poses a series of answers to the question, “how can performance offer different ways of sensing our bodies and our relationships to one another?” Through a sequence of evolving states—internal and external, individual and collective—this work stages the circulation of bodies and value, asking what it means to give, to take, to receive, to be taken.
For her intensive stay at the Renaissance Society, Evans begins by thinking of the gallery space as a container for bodies and sound; from there, she turns the room into a more active space of reflection by making use of a mobile sound system and scenographic interventions. As she determines the exact characteristics and specific elements of the project on site, Evans explores the possibilities of dance in an open and durational form, letting it take shape beyond the boundaries of a single event. Balancing a mix of private rehearsals and public presentations, different expressions of the project will be offered throughout with more details to be announced.
Evans creates innovative performances for a wide variety of contexts, including both museum spaces and the stage. Throughout her growing body of work, she seeks out the “knowledge our bodies hold” and considers the political undercurrents of movement. This comes into relief through Evans’s attention to the social structures that give shape to daily life and the ways people move in different milieus. Her practice centers around questions about the body and power, the body’s unruliness, strategies for working collaboratively and relationally with others, the pursuit of dance beyond visuality of the body and trusting that the imperceptible can produce material consequences.
Curated by Karsten Lund.
Launched in 2017, Intermissions is an ongoing programming series devoted to performance and other inventive time- based works, staged in the Renaissance Society’s empty gallery in between exhibitions. This recurring platform features two artists every year, supporting a wide variety of live projects.
