Blog: Project Origins

Here is a conversation about art as experience and as a form of thinking predicated on the agency of those who touch it.

Grace Farms & the Origins of Landscape

October 26, 2017

The Quiet Circus Launches at Grace Farms The next two weeks are big ones for The Quiet Circus. This is the first of three emails sharing the work that is happening simultaneously here in Philly and in CONNECTICUT at the beautiful Grace Farms in New Canaan. This Saturday Maiko Matsushima and I are launching the…

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Eiko Otake & Ishmael Houston-Jones

March 10, 2017

  Eiko Otake and Ishmael Houston Jones are dance artists whose dancing, choreography, writing and teaching are perhaps more relevant now than at any time in their 40 years of making performance. I am fortunate to spend time with them as they agitate and advise The Quiet Circus a weekly public performance that takes place…

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Eiko Otake and the Limit of Imagination

February 19, 2016

  I am writing again about Eiko Otake. If you were lucky enough to see her perform in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station last year, you know how special the ongoing work, A Body in Places, is. You can read more about Eiko in earlier posts, Eiko Otake and the Politics of Hesitation and Time is…

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A Choreography of Presence

April 27, 2015

  I am giving a lecture on Presence as part of Move Dance Think Fest‘s “The Significance of Everything” this weekend: Saturday, May 2 from 5 to 7pm at Headlong Studios. I will talk about working to create a choreography of presence that doesn’t fill up action but rather dictates action and embraces human diversity…

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Time Is Not Even

October 23, 2014

  Time is not even.  Welcome to the second letter in a series I am writing about my recent conversations with Eiko Otake, whose last of four performances is tomorrow night, Friday, October 24 from 9pm to midnight at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.  It will be a haunting time to observe a rare…

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Eiko Otake and the Politics of Hesitation

January 10, 2014

  I want to share with you the work and ideas of performance artist Eiko Otake of Eiko and Koma.  For me, they have long been a beacon of alternative ideas about the body in dance. Their performances, which often take place in striking visual settings, both found and designed, rejoice in a choreography thick…

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