forthcoming
20th June - 10th August 2024: PAGE/STAGE/SPACE, San Mei Gallery, London
San Mei Gallery presents PAGE/STAGE/SPACE, an exhibition curated by motor dance journal foregrounding contemporary artists working within and around the field of dance, including works by Zinzi Minott, Rowland Hill and Mary Hurrell.
Dance as an art form has permeated myriad fields – film, social media, printed matter, gallery and social spaces. These sites and stagings in turn invite new understandings of how and what dance can be. PAGE/STAGE/SPACE challenges the idea that dance must be ‘live’ and foregrounds different choreographic registers existing simultaneously. The group of artists featured in this exhibition share a commitment to an expanded understanding of dance as it mutates across media and temporalities. Brought in dialogue, their practices create an asynchronous overlapping of forms and approaches, with the gallery populated by material traces and interdisciplinary transformations of dance.
More information here
2nd May 2024: Groupwork: A Reading Group and Shared Meal, Rum46, Aarhus
motor dance journal will be hosting a reading group and shared meal as part of their residency with Sigrids Stue and Rum 46 . The session considers dance as a social activator - a practice to imagine and enact alternative to be ways of being together. We will, together, explore forms of group choreography through the shared practices of reading, writing, moving, watching, talking and listening.
All welcome. No prep required. The event runs 17.00-19.00 with a shared networking meal from 19.00 onwards.
31st January 2024: Stack Magazine Club Conversations
motor dance journal will be in conversation with the Stack Magazine Club community, answering questions about the thinking behind motor as well as the making process. The conversation will be recorded.
16th November 2023: Journal Launch, Reference Point, London
motor dance journal is thrilled to announce the publication of 'Duets and Dialogues', issue 2 of a trilogy dedicated to dance and writing about dance. Join us from 7pm at Reference Point to celebrate the launch. We will have readings, screenings and performances from Zara Joan Miller, Lena Leszczynska, Florence Peake and Eve Stainton, and there will be time for dancing too!
‘Duets and Dialogues’ considers the creative, personal, and social possibilities of dancing in relation to another. It features writing, conversations and artworks exploring themes including friendship, motherhood, creative partnerships, doubles, dance and place, translation and writing, and the relationship between dance and film.
The issue includes contributions from a diverse array of choreographers, writers, artists, curators, and poets including Yvonne Rainer, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Laurie Anderson, Collier Schorr, Susan Finlay, Beatrice Gibson and many more.
19:00 Doors
20:00 Introduction from Motor, followed by film screening from Zara Joan Miller and a reading from Lena Leszczynska
20:30 Intermission
21:00 Florence Peake and Eve Stainton
21:30-23:00 Music and dancing
6th-9th September 2023: Novembre Lounge @ Low classic, Seoul
motor dance journal is one of the fifty publications selected to feature in The Novembre Lounge at LOW CLASSIC: an airport lounge for a city on the move: a place to rest, read, and return to the world recharged. A portal that contains portals. A space for public recreation. Curated by Novembre and LOW CLASSIC, Seoul. More information here.
4th April 2023: Independent Magazines Talk w/Stack
motor dance journal will be speaking at Stack's Independent Magazine inspiration event. We'll be discussing our editorial process as well as why we decided to make motor. Tickets can be purchased here.
15th November 2022: Journal Launch, ICA, London
motor dance journal warmly invites you to the launch of its first print publication. The Solo considers the creative, personal and social possibilities of dancing on one’s own. It features a diverse array of dancers, artists, curators and writers, including Gillian Wearing, Catherine Wood, Siobhan Davies, Rose English, Lucinda Chua, Candela Capitán, Stephanie LaCava and many more, on themes as varied as the choreographies of cruising, to paparazzi shots of Brittany Murphy outside a ballet class.
The launch will feature readings from motor contributors Philomena Epps and Jack Parlett. The evening will also be the first opportunity to view and purchase the publication. Find out more here.
12th June 2021: Conference, UCL
A Call for Action: Moving is Understanding is a day-long conference that considers the valuable contributions dance can bring to the field of Art History, and how it can interrogate and expand the knowledge structures on which the discipline is based. The conference will be an opportunity to come together to present papers and share performance practices, exploring and engaging with dance as a means to reconsider the personal, the social, the political and the ethical. We invite speakers/practitioners to engage with contemporary and historic material to highlight how dance produces and (re)configures relations—between self and other, body and environment—exposing power structures and providing an alternative means to knowledge.
The day’s programme will be organised by three themes; ‘1: solo activities’, ‘2: duets/dialogues’, and ‘3: group work’. Whilst we would not like these groupings to appear limiting, they will provide a structuring principle for our investigation into the various ways a body, or multiple bodies, can be activated and mobilised to forge both internal and external relationships.
View the full conference here.
Session 1 | Solo(s)
Face after Face: Cruising as a ‘quick dance’
Jack Parlett, Junior Research Fellow in English at University College, Oxford University.
Choreography as Climate Action: Embodied Experience and Environmental Movements
Subathra Subramaniam, choreographer, dancer, educator and Artistic Director at Akademi (the UK’s leading South Asian Dance organisation).
Our Bodies Our Archives
Tamsin Hong, Assistant Curator of Performance at Tate Modern.
Session 2 | Duets/Dialogues
Movement, life, performance
Helia Marcal, conservator, researcher and lecturer in Art, Materials and Technology at University College London
The Old Coat: Some brief reflections on dance, plot and itinerancy
Clair Wills, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge and a keen, if not very proficient, jazz dancer.
A dialogue with the archival body (A reference to a reference to monumentality) [film]
Sanna Helena Berger, artist working with performance, choreography, installation, video, text and sound.
The Critique of Institutional Dressage: Mike Kelley and Kate Foley’s Pantomime Horse Dance
Lisa Moravec, critic, researcher, and PHD candidate at Royal Holloway’s Drama, Theatre, and Dance department
Session 3 | Groupwork
The founding and early history of Chisenhale Dance Space (1980-1988)
Rachael Davies, curator, researcher, writer and PHD candidate at Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University
Crush: Social Embodiment in Yvonne Rainer's ‘Concept of Dust’
Caitrín Barrett-Donlon, art historian and dancer, based in London.
HERDING, 2021 [film]
Movement /// Possession - London-based platform for experimentation with movement and play will present a film made with Isa Rakel, performance artist and activist.
Keynote
The Death at the Club. in 45 min. (2018 -2021) [live performance]
Candela Capitán, contemporary dancer and choreographer (Lesionada Bendicion)
