In the age of the 2020 pandemic, Harper Joy, along with theaters across the nation and globe, were called to cancel the remainder of their spring seasons for the sake of public health.
The HJT 2020 Spring Studio Series was originally scheduled to premiere four new works of various dance artists within the walls of the Freimann Theatre. Fortunately, even under quarantine conditions, it was able to be preserved and adapted for viewers at home to engage with and enjoy. Below, please enjoy the second work from the series, Terrific Freight by Julie Mayo along with a discussion about her work in a following link.
Terrific Freight
Terrific Freight is a dance that carves a shared lyrical consciousness amongst the performers and creates a highly specific world with its own logic and flows. Relying on a sustained energetic cohesion as its structural edifice, Terrific Freight creates a kind of abstract exorcism without a nameable object of expulsion. This work exemplifies my continued interest and research of the shifting of tension and attention of performer(s) as content and multiplicity of affect and the mutability of movement and voice as an organizing principle.
To view discussion in link below, use Password: SSSMayoTalk
Julie Mayo is a choreographer based in New York whose work has been called “associative, sometimes absurd” by The New Yorker. Making dances that foreground performance as content and resist easy description of lived experience Mayo’s work has been presented in New York by Gibney Dance, The Chocolate Factory, The Kitchen (Dance and Process), Movement Research at the Judson Church, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, JACK and Dixon Place and nationally by Highways in Los Angeles, Columbus Dance Theater (OH) and NOHspace and Dance Mission in San Francisco. Julie was a 2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, a 2014-2015 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks artist, and is a Dance In Process Artist at Gibney for 2020. Julie currently teaches at Movement Research (NYC) and has been a guest artist at colleges and universities including University of Wisconsin/Madison, Dickinson College, University of Nebraska, Wilson College, Ohio University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Broward Community College, Middlebury College and University of Virginia.
Stay tuned for the next two posts with works of dance artists Tia Kramer, Moonyeka and Nic Masangkay. UPDATE: Stay tuned for just Moonyeka Masangkay.