INTERVIEW: Women in Motion celebrates work of female choreographers
Photo: Dancers with Same as Sister are part of 2020’s Women in Motion. Photo courtesy of Ian Douglas / Provided by Michelle Tabnick PR with permission.
The all-volunteer Women in Motion organization offers many opportunities to female and female-identifying choreographers. They do this, according to press notes, by commissioning original, challenging works by a group of talented dance makers.
The organization’s latest showcase, dubbed POP Performance: Women in Motion presents asubtout, Rebecca Stenn, Same As Sister, recently played The Theater at Gibney in New York City. The evening consisted of newly commissioned works by the three choreographic groups.
asubtout consists of the creativity of Katy Pyle and Eleanor Hullihan, and their new work is called The Centaur Show, a wild ride that depicts two centaurs on an intergalactic voyage. Oh, and it’s billed as a death metal poperetta. The piece, featuring original live music and video, actually first premiered in 2007, but its 2020 run was a reworked version.
Stenn’s addition is called The Oak and The Willow, a duet by Stenn and Quinn Dixon. Press notes indicate that the piece is a painterly exploration of movement, color and brushstroke.
Rounding out the trio of works is the entry by Same as Sister, also known as S.A.S., featuring the choreography of Briana Brown-Tipley and Hilary Brown-Istrefi. Their work consists of a backdrop of IKEA and dedicated themes of celebrity culture, expectation, fear and consumption.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Melissa Riker, one of the three co-directors of Women in Motion. She is joined by Erin Cairns Cella and Amber Sloan. Questions and answers have beens slightly edited for style.
What was the original mission when you founded Women in Motion?
Women in Motion was originally a small part of the EstroGenius Festival. The fest was founded in 2000 by Fiona Jones with the mission to bring dynamic, complicated, interesting female characters to the stage for women to act, direct and design. Women in Motion was the dance platform for female dance artists to show and test work. We ran it as a ‘showcase,’ six to 10 artists showing 5-10 minutes of their work, building community and being seen. Fran Kirmser coined the phrase ‘Women in Motion’ for the September 2001 show that featured myself and Sara Juli.
How has the journey been since those early days?
Inspiring! We ran for years within this showcase format, growing in the sense that we could offer more dates within the larger festival, and eventually growing because I found a co-producer in Jessica Edkins. At the time that Jess stepped in I was running a studio space on 33rd Street, so [with] two minds and a space — so much more was possible!
We could imagine a bit bigger, and something Jess pushed for was a way to request work from artists and offer support. In those days we could offer space and invention, so we requested work from Amber Sloan and Esther Palmer as a project, [and] Alexx Shilling and Jess created the transitions between the works. Now, and since that year, we’ve had at least three producers, and we stuck with this vision of requesting work from artists and supporting it for longer and longer periods of time.
With huge thanks to the Bang Group for partnering with us as a producer, we now request a 20-minute work from three artists and work to support and help develop that work over a full year! The awesome 2019/2020 cohort of Rebecca Stenn, Same as Sister and asubtout is our fourth year-long commission.
What can audiences expect from this upcoming performance of Women in Motion?
Ahh! So much variation! These artists are so smart! Same as Sister creates dance theatre work that leaves you hyper aware of society and questions — like twists and turns of a dealer’s hand, but with such grace! Rebecca Stenn is a stellar choreographer and award-winning painter; her work is epic in a different way — in a painterly, dynamic, becoming way. It isn’t often that the scope of a duet can feel so enormous, but she manages it!
Finally, Katy and Eleanor (asubtout) are both highly technical dancers unafraid of hilarity or galactical aims in their work: ‘a nouveau New Age fantasy death metal poperetta about two centaurs on an interstellar voyage to save their (non) binary star system from imminent supernova. If you want a gorgeous, varied, discussion-spurring evening, come to the show. Really, it’s not to be missed. We are so lucky to have these three artists in one place — it may never happen again!
Has there been a lot of progress in the last 20 years for female and female-identifying choreographers?
This is such an interesting question, because there has been progress, but surprisingly slow. Prior to EstroGenius or Women in Motion was a collective of female choreographers working on what they called ‘The Gender Project’ — they had successes in pointing out incredible statistics of where the glass ceiling was in the arts; while the main body of the population of dance artists are women, the representation of female makers at a certain level of more visible performance dropped dramatically.
Roughly 10 years ago there was a new, field-wide push for recognition and representation of race, gender and mobility. This was a heightened challenge to presenters to pay attention to whom they were presenting on their boards. Amplifying one another, believing one another, supporting and allowing for open communication amongst artists is a powerful thing and still incredibly needed. We are living in a more aware age, but we are also living at a time that uniting as a field, showing the value of the arts and seeing one another for our immense talents as a community is imperative. I am still often taken aback at how many seasons of larger theaters (BAM, for instance!) do not have equal representation in their posters of choreographers or directors of works.
When Women in Motion decides to work with an artist, what are the qualities you are most interested in seeing? What makes a successful candidate for a commission?
We pay attention to work for years. We also pay attention to how artists work with other presenters and other artists. We are interested in dance works made by female-identifying artists that challenge and push the form of dance. A big help to our process of meeting artists are our WIM Salons. These are non-curated, very informal, pop-up performance experiences where choreographers can show that new thing they’ve been trying in a friendly audience atmosphere. It is a way to bring more and more artists together, and to see more work in it’s very early stages.
We are interested in giving a platform to new explorations, and we are interested in offering artists time to dive deeply into an idea. We are also looking for a cohort, so it isn’t about one artist at a time. An ideal cohort is made up of artists that create balance as a group, and who will find a line of communication between them, ideally in the way that building a small community of smart, talented individuals pushes each person to be their best creative self.
We recognize that as a commissioning collective we place importance [on] an artist’s creative process, a rehearsal practice and craft — an artist that is interested in creating, breaking apart their work and seeing what makes a work better. Some of our most successful commissions have been with artists that started with one idea and switched gears entirely; or artists who started with a tiny seed of something, and by the performances of the work had built a huge swirl of experience. We have also had beautiful success with artists who have diligently continued exploring. It is the depth of exploration and a willingness to not-know that makes some of the most successful commissions.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
POP Performance: Women in Motion presents asubtout, Rebecca Stenn, Same As Sister recently played The Theater at Gibney in New York City. Click here for more information.
