jill sigman/thinkdance 25th Anniversary Performance Season: Re-Seeding

jill sigman/thinkdance celebrates its milestone 25th anniversary with a new and expanded iteration of the Re-Seeding project. Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) is a rigorous ritual-based process grounded in an exploration of our interconnectedness to land and each other. Building on Sigman’s dances and installations about environmental and social justice issues, Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) asks what it could mean for humans to “re-seed” themselves on land where their histories are entangled with colonization and occupation in a way that moves toward healing. Is it possible to understand the past and aspire toward collective wellbeing? What can those living in diaspora learn from plants that root themselves in new places and contribute to ecosystems in positive ways?

The Re-Seeding process has included unearthing histories of colonized sites, performers researching their own family lineages, foraging wild plants, work with clay, and movement exploring embodied histories of displacement. This iteration of Re-Seeding is performed in a space that overlooks the historic site of the public commons of colonial New York. The disappearance of the commons and the privatization of land heralded a critical shift from land as owned by no one and shared by all to land as “resource” and private property.

The piece is composed of detailed improvisational scores that, taken together, form a ritual calling for deep listening, relationality, and transformation. The live movement and sound scores are created and performed by dancers Dani “dan” Cole, Donna Costello, zavé martohardjono, Jill Sigman, J’nae Simmons, and Stacy Lynn Smith, and musicians Kristin Norderval (composer, voice, laptop), Gustavo Aguilar (percussion), and Miguel Frasconi (glass). The performance includes live painting with plant pigments by visual artist Paula Walters Parker. Dramaturgical support by Marguerite Hemmings. Ceramics by Jill Sigman. Contributions to the process by Amala’ika Rinyire.

There are four performances of Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons). Seating is limited. Evening performances take place Friday, June 21 and Saturday, June 22 at 7pm. Afternoon performances take place Saturday, June 22and Sunday, June 23 at 3pm. Evening performances are preceded by Pre-Show Tea with Special Guests at 6pmin the Gibney Gallery where you can taste wild edible tea in a casual setting and meet a fascinating array of scholars, activists, and artists working with environmental justice, waste, plants, and repair. All performances are followed by an optional discussion with the artists. Sunday’s afternoon performance is followed by a 25th Anniversary Celebration with light bites, company memorabilia, and special guests.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Friday, June 21

7pm Re-Seeding Performance. Pre-Show Tea with Special Guests starts at 6pm.

Saturday, June 22

3pm Re-Seeding Performance

7pm Re-Seeding Performance. Pre-Show Tea with Special Guests starts at 6pm.

Sunday, June 23

3pm Re-Seeding Performance followed by 25th Anniversary Celebration

COVID-19 CONSIDERATIONS

Due to the intimate nature of this studio performance, we request that attendees wear masks. Masks will be offered by jill sigman/thinkdance onsite. If you are feeling unwell and/or test positive, please do not attend the events.

ACCESSIBILITY

Gibney 280 Broadway is accessible via elevator from the main entrance at 53A Chambers Street. Please refrain from wearing scented products, so that people with chemical sensitivities can join us.

HOW TO GET THERE

Gibney 280 Broadway is located in Lower Manhattan across from City Hall at the nexus of Tribeca and the Financial District, near the following subway stations:

Brooklyn Bridge City Hall: 4, 5, 6, J, Z
City Hall: R, W
Chambers Street: A, C, 1, 2, 3
Park Place: 2, 3

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jill Sigman is a choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and agent of change whose work exists at the intersection of dance, visual art, and social practice. She founded jill sigman/thinkdance in 1998 to think about pressing social issues through the body. Since then, her work has reached thousands of people in 13 countries around the world. Sigman has created community by dancing in public space, building site-specific structures out of waste, food sharing, and tea serving. In 2016, Sigman developed Body Politic, a program of workshops, performance laboratories, and an artist-activist incubator to ask salient political questions somatically, and in 2022 she initiated a Social Justice Movement Lab for artist-activists. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she launched Motion Practice, a series of outdoor public events for communal movement and connection, and Somatic Tools for Social Justice, a series of online workshops. Centering things we cast off such as “garbage” and “weeds”, Sigman helps us to re-envision our relationships with the natural world and each other in meaningful and empathic ways. Sigman has been the inaugural Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney; an artist in residence at Movement Research, The Rauschenberg Residency, Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology (Mexico), the Kri Foundation (India), and The Rauschenberg Residency; a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research at NYU; and a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University, where she teaches collaboratively with scholars in many disciplines. She was born and raised in Brooklyn on Lenape-Canarsee land and studied classical ballet, philosophy, and art conservation.

WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT

These performances of Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) were made possible with residency support from Gibney Center. Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons) is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, as a NYSCA Sponsored Artist of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. The Re-Seeding project has been developed with support from Dragon’s Egg, Pioneers Go East Collective, Amsterdam Eco-Arts, and the Paul Robeson Galleries Artist in Residence Program at Rutgers University—Newark. Additional support came from the Dance Advancement Fund, Gibney Digital Media Initiative, VoxLAB Oslo, and the Maison De L’Academie Nationale Norvegienne Des Beaux Arts, Paris. Support for the ceramics was provided by MUGI Studio and New Prospect Pottery.

Top photo of Jill Sigman by Claudia Lucacel, video by Gibney DMI, lower photo of Dani "dan" Cole, Stacy Lynn Smith, Amala'ika Rinyire, and Jill Sigman by Gibney DMI