Movement Research
movement research is one of the world's leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. Valuing the individual artist and their creative process and vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike.
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Studies Project: "Are Y'all Really Feeling Me?" How Black Performance moves beyond just Matter(ing)
02/13/2020
Studies Project: "Are Y'all Really Feeling Me?" How Black Performance moves beyond just Matter(ing)
January 22, 2020. Organized by André Daughtry This panel intends to speak to an illegibility of the spiritual black body to predominantly white audiences in performance with artists whose work addresses an "epistemic absence” in the performance community. Noting that Experimental performance can be extremely innovative when probing the multiplicitous issues surrounding identity, guest artists will discuss how they address normative approaches to performance – like the performer/spectator bifurcation –when the performers exhibiting work were often raised in spiritually infused movement traditions as participant-observers not as “audience” Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronted and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information on Movement Research please visit
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Studies Project: Social Wounds in the BodyMind: Somatic and Trauma-Informed practices for Collective Healing
01/05/2020
Studies Project: Social Wounds in the BodyMind: Somatic and Trauma-Informed practices for Collective Healing
December 8, 2019. Moderated by Ni’Ja Whitson Panelists: Cheryl Clark, Martha Eddy, Kayvon Pourazar, and Sangeeta Vallabhan. This Studies Project explored how social injustices impact people’s lives and communities; who has access to healing and somatic practices; how we as somatics practitioners are working with offering trauma-informed approaches to our communities. This event brought together artists and practitioners whose individual somatic and trauma-informed practices were generated from their personal journeys, commitment to healing themselves, and process of sharing their research to hold space for others. Through this conversation we attempted to address how to generate more inclusive, collective and fully accessible healing spaces. This Studies Project was a part of the Movement Research Festival Fall 2019: ComeUnion. It took place on December 8, 2019 at Movement Research on First Avenue in New York City. Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronted and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information on Movement Research please visit
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Studies Project: Re-Presenting Asian-America
01/05/2020
Studies Project: Re-Presenting Asian-America
December 11, 2019 Moderated and Organized by Rebecca Fitton Participants: Alexis Convento, Zavé Martohardjono, and Mena Sachdev A community discussion aimed to amplify the diverse reality of the blanket term “Asian-American.” Led and organized by movement artists who self-identity as Asian, this Studies Project focused on reframing American Asian-ness, reclaiming the Asian moving body outside of “model minority” and confronting other racial signifying terms such as POC, ALAANA, MENA, AAPI, etc. and their relationships to this conversation. The conversation focused on the broad understanding of Asian-ness in the U.S. in reference to Asian-American and how it can erase the full spectrum of narratives aligned with self-identifying as Asian, in part due to colorism, border politics and ideals of a “model minority” only allowed to succeed on an intellectual level. This Studies Project took place on December 11, 2019 at Movement Research on 1st Avenue in New York City. Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information please visit:
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Studies Project: "Another world is not only possible..." // Artistry During Challenging Times
11/15/2019
Studies Project: "Another world is not only possible..." // Artistry During Challenging Times
October 21, 2019 Organized by Raha Benham. This gathering aimed to incite, inspire and generate conversation, questions and action in this time of unprecedented global ecological and economic crisis. Asking a series of timely questions as artists residing in a country with the most historically and presently destructive policies globally, as well as the most rampant use of energy and resources, we consider: How are we responsible? What does our art making have to do with this crisis? What are our options for engagement, and what will we choose to do together? Please join us to consider these urgent questions. The quote “Another world is not only possible...” in the title of this Studies Project is by Arundhati Roy. This Studies Project took place on October 21, 2019 at Movement Research on First Avenue in New York City. Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances, and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronted and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information on Movement Research please visit
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Studies Project: Dance Makers in the Schools: Kids Need Dance
03/22/2019
Studies Project: Dance Makers in the Schools: Kids Need Dance
February 26, 2019 Organized by Diana Crum, with invited guests: Becky Serrell Cyr, Nicholas Leichter, Olivia Occelli. Kids Need Dance-- focuses on pedagogy and how radical methods of supporting childhood development intersect with teaching dance. Readings, shared beforehand with participants and centering on the intersections of making, learning, and cultural traditions in the U.S, will help anchor the conversation. Join local educators, artists and activists to consider and discuss. This Studies Project took place on February 26, 2019 at Movement Research Courtyard Studio on 1st Avenue and 9th Street in New York City. Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information please visit:
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Studies Project: Immigrants for immigrants: taste of home
11/12/2018
Studies Project: Immigrants for immigrants: taste of home
October 15, 2018 The AoCC will host an intimate gathering, creating space for immigrant performing artists to share personal stories, cuisine, reflections and resources with the community in an effort to form lasting bonds and cultivate relationships to each other and local art organizations. Artists will engage in a conversation about the struggles of immigration and the effects on the body in the performance practice while tasting tapas and small appetizers from various cuisines. Food sharing is a universal form of expressing fellowship. "Immigrants for immigrants: taste of home" is an opportunity to create a platform to support each other and grow as a community. LOCATION UPDATE: This workshop was held at Movement Research, 122 Community Center (150 First Avenue) in the second floor studio. 122 Community Center is a fully ADA compliant facility. Participants: , , , Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information please visit:
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Studies Project: Decolonial Design, Indigenous Choreography, and Multicorporeal Sovereignties: A womanist/Queer/Trans Indigenous Movement Dialogue
07/02/2018
Studies Project: Decolonial Design, Indigenous Choreography, and Multicorporeal Sovereignties: A womanist/Queer/Trans Indigenous Movement Dialogue
Feburary 18, 2018 This studies project is organized by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán With panelists Rasha Abdulhadi, Anthony Aiu, Vaimoana Niumeitolu, Melissa Iakowi:he'ne' Oakes, Kaina Quenga Decolonial Design principles resonate across artistic expressions—performative, visual, tactile, acoustic, olfactory, gustatory, terrestrial—and the range of living-creature-made and naturally-occurring compositions. Embedded in each being, each Indigenous constellation of relations, larger system of systems, are organizing principles, rationales shaping their design and interaction. Articulating an interwoven Indigenous conceptualization of choreography, in which Native movement is embedded in a larger set of relations, human motion within a world of motion, this decolonial dialogue seeks to restore our cosmological context. Gathering together womanist/queer/trans Native North American, Indigenous Pacific, and Palestinian movement makers and multimedia artists, activists and community organizers, critics, and educators, this dialogue illustrates the interlinked nature of our intersectional sovereign movements, our simultaneous struggles for self-determination over our terrestrial, physical, and cultural bodies. This Studies Project took place on February 18, 2018 at 3 pm at Abrons Art Center G05. Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information please visit:
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Studies Project: An ethics of (talking about) watching
06/20/2018
Studies Project: An ethics of (talking about) watching
May 8, 2018 In this Studies Project participants will engage in a conversation around the notion of (talking about) watching. How do we create the space for feedback in which artists/performers and their work is addressed properly, respectfully, and/or ethically? Can/must this space be crafted collectively? Which ramifications does this have for the role of a moderator? Additionally, how do existing systems for feedback facilitation (i.e. Critical Response Process, Fieldwork, etc.) break down when interrupted or intervened upon by supremacist ideas of aesthetics and value? Are these systems for facilitation and feedback adequate, inadequate, or beyond repair? What alternatives have been developed? How can we develop further practices of critique in dance and performance that de-center the respondent? Moderated by Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal with panelists Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Jaime Shearn Coan, André Daughtry, Yvonne Montoya, Mark Travis Rivera Studies Project is an artist-curated series of panel discussions, performances and/or other formats that focus on provocative and timely issues of aesthetics and philosophy in the intersection of dance and social politics, confronting and instigated by the dance and performance community. For more information please visit:
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Studies Project: Diasporic Interventions
03/16/2018
Studies Project: Diasporic Interventions
With panelists from Chinatown Art Brigade (est. 2015), South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (est. 1997), and Yellow Jackets Collective (est. 2015). These collectives organize multi-ethnic Asian communities across language barriers in an increasingly gentrified and art market-driven Chinatown, connect and showcase South Asian women artists and creative professionals, and center POC/Queer/Femme/marginalized communities through political education, nightlife events, and queer archiving.
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Studies Project: Interdisciplinary Responses to the Political Moment
03/09/2018
Studies Project: Interdisciplinary Responses to the Political Moment
Pramila Vasudevan and Piotr Szyhalski, invite artists, Salome Asega and Jill Sigman, to participate in a facilitated dialogue about the responsiveness of artistic practice to pressing sociopolitical and ecological concerns of our time. Through artist-led presentations that will detail a range of interdisciplinary strategies, this Studies Project will share how arts practitioners are making political interventions while challenging formal expectations around legibility, site-specificity, and linearity.
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Studies Project: Stories, Strategies and Practices
03/02/2018
Studies Project: Stories, Strategies and Practices
Hosted by the Movement Research Artists of Color Council and Organized by Lily Bo Shapiro and Stanley Gambucci With Arthur Aviles, Ebony Noelle Golden, Eli Tamondong and Stephanie Acosta. This event took place on October 10, 2017.
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Studies Project: Precarious Collaboration and Equitable Conflict
10/13/2017
Studies Project: Precarious Collaboration and Equitable Conflict
Wildcat!, a civically-minded, collaborative performance organization, brings together a panel of performers, artists, and activists to discuss how equitable conflict manifests in contemporary performance practices. How might the role of conflict be reconsidered within collaborative work? What potential lies in negotiating equitable conflict as a means of devising performance? As a means of shifting from militaristic ideas of conflict toward cyclical acts of supportive response?
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Studies Project: Epic Memory Lab Nia Love
10/13/2017
Studies Project: Epic Memory Lab Nia Love
Nia Love re-configures and re-examines the meanings of ‘safe-space’, domesticity, and self care in an installment of her latest project, the Epic Memory Lab (EMLab). Taking the form of a potluck, Love will facilitate a candid dialogue about healing and aging that will be guided by the recipes, stories, and family heirlooms offered by attendees.
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Studies Project: Does the Dance Field Make Room for Dancer-Parents?
10/06/2017
Studies Project: Does the Dance Field Make Room for Dancer-Parents?
April 29, 2017 This conversation will take a detailed look at the culture around child-rearing as a performer. How do structures and attitudes in the field invite and support or discourage and overlook the choice to be primarily a dancer, rather than a dance-maker? In a dance economy focused on finding support for choreographers, what are the concrete ways performers are finding to navigate parenting and dancing? Moderated by Nia Love With Anna Azrieli, Peggy Cheng, Heather Olson Trovato, Samantha Speis and Sarah White-Ayón
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Studies Project: Appropriate Citations
09/29/2017
Studies Project: Appropriate Citations
Citation and adaptation have been fertile and even groundbreaking creative processes. Cultural appropriations have also masked power dynamics and violent processes of dispossession. How are performance makers navigating citational and appropriative processes with intention and within a range of proximities and intimacies with their sources? How do these artistic practices contend with and complicate colonial and extractive procedures?
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Studies Project: Talking Heads: What’s Your How?
09/22/2017
Studies Project: Talking Heads: What’s Your How?
Movement Research's editors create a temporary "publication": a live site igniting conversation, debate and language around the current moment. Faced with extreme conservatism, how will New York City dance/performance people activate their power, access, resources and social missions? Questions will be posed and answered within a time limit. Categories include: culture in the current political climate; gossip; equity; formulating a new avant-garde in a socially responsible way. GAME SHOW!
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Fall Festival: Financial and Personal Wellness in Dance: A Panel Discussion
09/15/2017
Fall Festival: Financial and Personal Wellness in Dance: A Panel Discussion
A panel discussion moderated by Kay Takeda, Director of Grants & Services at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
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Passage a dialogue with doulas, dancers, and caregivers
11/30/2016
Passage a dialogue with doulas, dancers, and caregivers
Movement Research Studies Project, "Passage a dialogue with doulas, dancers, and caregivers" - June 7, 2016
Moderated by Risa Shoup with panelists Anna Carapetyan, devynn emory, Robert Kocik, and iele paloumpis. This Studies Project will bring together dance artists who also work in the field of care-giving: end-of-life, beginning-of-life, navigators of illness and wellness. Why do many dancers become doulas? What is the overlap between guiding bodies through the cycles of life, and guiding bodies through space? What is it that draws dance artists to this profession? How do we acknowledge the specific needs of different communities and that all care is not equal/universal?
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Diversity and Accountability: A conversation with the MR Artists of Color Council
11/09/2016
Diversity and Accountability: A conversation with the MR Artists of Color Council
Movement Research Studies Project, "Diversity and Accountability: A conversation with the MR Artists of Color Council" - November 2, 2016
With Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Alicia Ohs, Lisa Parra, Marýa Wethers and Tara Aisha Willis. The artists driving this new Movement Research initiative open their current conversations to a wider audience, sharing thoughts on the Council’s mission and their experiences as artists of color within Movement Research’s programs. In support of accountability efforts underway within Movement Research and working towards two-way transparency, the Council invites the concerns of the community around cultural diversity, equity, and sustainable structural integration into the space.
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Back to School with Teaching Artists
11/01/2016
Back to School with Teaching Artists
Movement Research Studies Project, "Back to School with Teaching Artists" - October 11, 2016
Initiated and Hosted by Diana Crum, Director of MR's Dance Makers in the Schools Program. Using the context of the Movement Research lineage and community as a base to move out from, this roundtable discussion is an opportunity for teaching artists to gather and share their current ideas, inspirations, and practices. We'll kick off the conversation with invited guest speakers Mariangela Lopez, Jules Skloot and Adrienne Westwood.
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Does the Dance Field Make Room for Parenting
11/01/2016
Does the Dance Field Make Room for Parenting
Movement Research Studies Project, "Does the Dance Field Make Room for Parenting" - October 11, 2016 Initiated and moderated by Nami Yamamoto and Netta Yerushalmy
With Yanira Castro, Rebecca Davis, Ursula Eagly, Shannon Hummel, Craig Peterson, Stacy Spence and Donna Uchizono. We discussed and examined the culture around child-rearing in our field - in what ways do structures and attitudes in the field integrate and invite this choice and in what ways do they, often unconsciously, ignore or discourage this reality? How are artists who are also parents perceived? What are some of the concrete decisions and conditions individuals in the field employ to make it work?
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Body Disrupt
10/11/2016
Body Disrupt
Movement Research Studies Project, "Body Disrupt" - May 18, 2016 Initiated and moderated by Kathy Westwater
With Mat Fraser, Petra Kuppers, Marissa Perel, Cathy Weis, and Wendy Whelan Artists with disabilities and artists whose work disrupts normative notions of what constitutes a dancing body will come together in conversation. We will consider the artistic work of the panelists and how it opens up possibilities for dance to move beyond narrow historical paradigms to include a more expansive range of physical experience and formal content.
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Puppetry and Dance
07/29/2016
Puppetry and Dance
Movement Research Studies Project, "Puppetry and Dance" - April 5, 2016 Conceived by Nami Yamamoto
With Patti Bradshaw, Chris Green, Dan Hurlin, Christopher Williams, Nami Yamamoto Panelists will discuss their various perspectives on the integration of puppetry and dance in live performance. Like dance, puppetry is a hands-on, physical art form. What happens when the puppet appears onstage? This conversation will explore how artists are bringing these two forms together in unique ways and how they complement and inform one another.
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Band of Outsiders: Women
07/22/2016
Band of Outsiders: Women
Movement Research Studies Project, "Band of Outsiders Women" - March 1, 2016 Organized and Moderated by Sam Kim With Lorene Boubshian, Moria Brennan, Shelia Lewandoski, Noopur Singa, Adrienne Truscott Women dominate the dance and performance field in numbers, but not in visibility, ‘success,’ or positions of power. Let’s keep the issue at the forefront and explore how to rectify this. One of the biggest untapped resources is women helping and supporting other women more vocally and consciously—as the majority, our collective efforts would have a massive impact on leveling the field. In this panel, we’ll discuss how to effect change and meaningfully support the majority of our fellow practitioners. Any gender expression is welcome and all are encouraged to participate.
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Fall Festival Studies Project: An Artist Conversation between Nelisiwe Xaba and David Thomson - December 1, 2015
12/11/2015
Fall Festival Studies Project: An Artist Conversation between Nelisiwe Xaba and David Thomson - December 1, 2015
Movement Research Studies Project, "An Artist Conversation between Nelisiwe Xaba and David Thomson" - December 1, 2015 Part of Movement Research Festival Fall 2015: vanishing points, curated by Beth Gill and Cori Olinghouse
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Studies Project: Dancer as Agent - November 10, 2014
12/04/2015
Studies Project: Dancer as Agent - November 10, 2014
Movement Research Studies Project, "Dancer as Agent" - November 10, 2014 Conceived by Cecilia Roos in partnership with Iréne HultmanPanelists included Hilary Clark and Juliette Mapp
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Studies Project: what we talk about when we talk about somatics - November 10, 2015
12/02/2015
Studies Project: what we talk about when we talk about somatics - November 10, 2015
Movement Research Studies Project, "what we talk about when we talk somatics: a sharing of practices leading into conversation" - November 10, 2015With Justine Lynch, Antonio Ramos, Shelley Senter and RoseAnne SpradlinModerated by Levi Gonzalez
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Studies Project: What I've Learned about Choreography from Watching Movies, Films (and TV) - October 6th, 2015
10/14/2015
Studies Project: What I've Learned about Choreography from Watching Movies, Films (and TV) - October 6th, 2015
Movement Research Studies Project, "What I've Learned about Choreography from Watching Movies, Films (and TV)" - October 6, 2015 Conceived by Melinda Ring Moderated by Ryan Hill With panelists Layla Childs, Tere O’Connor, Melinda Ring, Sonya Robbins and Larissa Velez-Jackson
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Spring Festival Studies Project: Placing Performance - May 12th, 2015
09/14/2015
Spring Festival Studies Project: Placing Performance - May 12th, 2015
Movement Research Studies Project, "Placing Performance," Part of Movement Research Festival Spring 2015: LEGIBLE/ILLEGIBLE - May 12, 2015 Moderated by Sarah MaxwellWith panelists AUNTS, Megan Bridges and the Spring Festival co-curators, Layla Childs, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko and Samita Sinha.
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10/28/10 Moving Dialogue
07/21/2015
10/28/10 Moving Dialogue
Moving Dialogue: A Bucharest/New York Dance ExchangeDance Theater Workshop Showing
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