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...

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...

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,...

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?...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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. The Movement Research Artists of Color Council gathers together an intergenerational group of dance makers and performers to discuss their artistic practices and the practical realities that go hand in hand with them.

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.

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?

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...

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?

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!

A panel discussion moderated by Kay Takeda, Director of Grants & Services at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Panelists: Aaron Mattocks, Juliana May, Katy Pyle, Antonio Ramos

 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...

      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...

      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...

    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,...

  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...

  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...

  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...