simone forti dance constructions

She is particularly influenced by news and current events, and characterizes the trio of elements underpinning her later choreography as “body-mind-world.” As she elaborates: “You are not just body and mind, you are in the world, and I think it’s important to acknowledge all the voices that come to us through the media, to interpret the information, to try to understand how the information is formed and how we can relate to what is happening, how we get our impressions.”5. Simone Forti From her early minimalist dance-constructions, through her animal movement studies, land portraits and news animations, Forti has had a seminal influence on her field.   The foundational pieces she called Dance Constructions, for instance (first performed at the Reuben Gallery in 1960, and, the following year, in Yoko Ono’s loft), were, as the name implies, sculptural as well as choreographic. From her early minimalist dance/constructions through her animal studies, news animations and land portraits, Forti has worked with an eye towards creating idioms for exploring natural forms and behaviors. During the first week of the exhibition, the artist will be training the performers of her pieces, in sessions which the public is welcome to observe.     Below, we highlight a few of these dances, including Platforms, a favorite of Forti’s that she describes as “a love duet . 1961, Still from the teaching video of Huddle (1961), 2012. Her dance constructions Slant Board, See-Saw and Huddle will be performed in the exhibition on five occasions. The boxes each have two ropes attached. The Dance Constructions and other performance pieces by Simone Forti will be enacted in the galleries and in public spaces by students at the SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance). Dance Constructions. It was very exciting.” “We’re particularly interested in the idea of body-to-body transmission,” says Comer, “so we’ve been developing a new model of workshops with the organization Danspace Project to ensure that this work continues to inhabit the dance community and the new generations who will carry it forward.”, In the following video clip, excerpted from a recent oral history interview, conducted at MoMA in December 2015 by Janevski, Forti shares her own thoughts on the nature of MoMA’s responsibilities towards the Dance Constructions. Paxton. It’s breathing. Photograph: Marian van der Weide. It’s the job of the teacher to get them excited about the piece, and that the piece has its own interest and beauty. Dance, © 2016 Simone Forti. The boxes each have two ropes attached. Simone Forti recreates her innovative and influential Dance Constructions from 1961 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2004. These radically new dances created circumstances for the … A person who creates choreography is called a choreographer. Roller Boxes. She had studied with dancer Anna Halprin in San Francisco and in New York tried studying with Martha Graham. Taking turns, the performers disentangle themselves one at a time and climb over the others, until reaching solid ground and re-joining the huddle. . . When it is tightly wound, the first performer releases the rope, sending the second performer twirling as he or she rides out its untwisting. We’ve done it in sculpture gardens, we’ve done it in galleries. #MoMACollects, Simone Forti By Virginia B. Spivey May 1961, a young choreographer named Simone Forti (b. She also organized open-work sessions with her then husband, the Minimalist artist Robert Morris, gathering artists for communal, multidisciplinary explorations of movement, objects, sound, and light. And then they start to get with it. It’s highly participatory and suggests the way that notions of community were being rethought during the 1960s. The two of you are not in the same place, you’re each in your own dreams. Photo: Carol Peterson. 1961, Instruction sketch for Hangers (1961). Through February 3. These radically new dances created circumstances for the … It’s kind of a nighttime piece.” Kind of a nighttime piece.” We share commentary from Forti and Comer, as well as illustrations and some of the documentary materials that will help ensure “that they’re performed—and performed right.” Hangers. "Simone Forti: An Evening of Dance Constructions" is EXCLUSIVELY DISTRIBUTED by Microcinema DVD. Forti’s DANCE CONSTRUCTIONS are performed at MOMA on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 11:30 am, 1:30 pm, and 3:30 pm for the duration of the Judson Dance Theater exhibition. Athena Christa Holbrook, the Department’s Collection Specialist, spent several days documenting the rehearsals—watch a clip of Hangers below—and she’ll be posting about her experience soon.)   Forti: “Some of the [ Dance Constructions] are more meditational, [but] some are quite wild, like Roller Boxes, which consists of two or three boxes on rollers, depending on the size of the space. And I was able to think up the Dance Constructions, which gave me a feeling of my simple weight and mass and non-stylized movement. Taking Halprin’s revolutionary technique as her touchstone, Forti relocated to New York in the early 1960s. The ropes are close enough that the walkers brush the hangers, and the hangers are rocking; the walkers also brush each other. Pen and pencil on paper. The dominant artistic movement in the 1940s and 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was the first to place New York City at the forefront of international modern art. Simone Forti (b. Often the viewer can see broad brushstrokes, drips, splashes, or other evidence of the physical action that took place upon the canvas. More than documents of her “Dance Constructions,” Forti’s holograms became dancers themselves when she installed and interacted with them in performance spaces. In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. In mid-December the dances were formally added to MoMA’s collection. Slant Board. I shared the concert with Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine, and I did two pieces. Huddle. Department of Media and Performance Art, In the spring of 1961 Forti presented a full evening of pieces she called Dance Constructions, at Yoko Ono’s loft studio. . The first performer turns the second one around in the rope. Modern can mean related to current times, but it can also indicate a relationship to a particular set of ideas that, at the time of their development, were new or even experimental. In New York, she began developing the pieces she eventually called Dance Constructions: dances based around ordinary movement, chance, and simple objects like rope and plywood boards. Huddle was a way of encouraging reflection on what happens when a group of people come together and how they negotiate each other.” Forti’s legendary body of work has always transgressed commonly-held boundaries between dance, performance art, sculpture, and music. To see more recent additions to the collection, visit the website. Interview with Simone Forti and performers about her creation "The huddle". I have to be careful that the performers’ eyes stay open, and that they keep seeing. Forti explained: “I really liked the improvisation. At the end of the decade, Forti and Morris moved east. On Halprin’s outdoor dance deck in wooded Marin County, Forti explored improvisation, her motions guided by a keen alertness to the body’s anatomy. Describing her motivations behind the choreography for this morphing live sculpture, Forti has said: “I wanted to see something where you could watch people moving in a way that wasn’t stylized, that you could just see what it was like to have somebody climb, and to have people support that climbing, and to watch people in action doing something kind of unusual.”2. Forti: “Some of the [Dance Constructions] are more meditational, [but] some are quite wild, like Roller Boxes, which consists of two or three boxes on rollers, depending on the size of the space. I call that the zombie look. If you are interested in reproducing images from The Museum of Modern Art web site, please visit the Image Permissions page (www.moma.org/permissions). Halprin’s experimentation with improvisation resonated with Forti. In doing so, as Morris later noted, these pieces “attacked the notion of dance as a format that required the trained body of the dancer.”, Over the past half-century, Forti’s seven Dance Constructions have been performed by dancers around the world.   They do. Simone Forti and Charlemagne Palestine, Illuminations (1971–ongoing), performed at Vleeshal Markt, Middelburg, 2 April 2016. Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions (1960–61) were key forerunners to Judson Dance Theater. The two performers—each one in one of the boxes—whistle. For the past two decades she has been developing “Logomotion”, an improvisational dance/narrative form. Performance. Sculpture was no longer a static, remote form to be contemplated, but one to be actively negotiated.” Per Forti’s principles, these gestures were “pedestrian,” lacking the arch stylization and technical finesse of traditional dance forms. While her emphasis on improvisation and chance has remained steady, Forti’s work has evolved over the course of her career. The art of creating and arranging dances or ballets; a work created by this art. So as you’re learning it, you’re becoming comfortable not only with trying to support the weight of the other performers…but also with being that close to the people around you and forming a unit that is so interconnected that it really becomes about the group rather than the individual.”4, “Body-Mind-World” Made from inexpensive materials, including plywood and rope, each “construction” prompts actions such as climbing, leaning, standing or whistling. First performed in 1960 at the Reuben Gallery in Soho, and then in Yoko Ono’s loft the following year, they marked “a watershed moment when the relationship between bodies and objects, movement and sculpture, was being fundamentally rethought,” says Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art. SIMONE FORTI DANCE CONSTRUCTIONS* Saturday, November 24, at 11:30 am, 1:30 pm, and 3:30 pm. Forti was born in Florence, Italy to Jewish parents Milka Forti (née Greunstein) and Mario Forti. In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. MoMA is not merely acquiring the rights to the dances, she says, but more specifically “the ability to have these pieces continue their life past when I do mine.” [For] Roller Boxes, we just had two boxes because it was a teeny little gallery, and that was the only time that the audience pulled the ropes. Abstract This study, focusing on the 2015 acquisition of Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions, a suite of performance works first shown in New York in 1960 and 1961, by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), details the museum’s first acquisition of historical dance works and an important model for collecting live performance and time-based artworks. When Milka recovered, the family sailed to the United States in early 1939. But Forti is still dancing. Photograph. The act of improvising, that is, to make, compose, or perform on the spur of the moment and with little or no preparation. These nine pieces proved to be influential in both the fields of dance and visual arts. I see it as a love duet. Simone Forti is an Italian born, multi-disciplinary artist currently residing in Los Angeles. “With all of the Dance Constructions, a huge part of it is trust,” Holbrook relates. Simone Forti in Conversation with Jennie Goldstein. Video. A primarily American artistic movement of the 1960s, characterized by simple geometric forms devoid of representational content. These radically new dances created circumstances for the performers' direct, non-stylistic actions. In addition, Forti and the curators plan to work closely with groups of dancers and teachers to continue annual workshops that communicate the dances to new generations of performers and participants. new acquisitions, Sometimes it sounds like they’re answering each other. In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. Forti: “One of my favorite pieces is Platforms. In the winter of 1938, the Forti family, including Forti's older sister Anna, left Italy to escape anti-Semitic persecution. Her research involved both observation and participation. Then on the out-breath, a tone. Her ‘Dance Constructions’ (1960–61) made her a pioneer not only of Postmodern dance but also of Minimal art. Huddle, a piece performed in silence, involves six to nine performers interlocking their bodies in a huddle.   It takes a little time.” The resulting constellation of materials—ranging from teaching videos to sketches, historical photos, notebooks, and recorded interviews—extensively document previously performed versions and, crucially, offer precise instructions for future dancers. In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. Since the early 1960s, Simone Forti has explored relationships between movement, objects, text, sound, and site. There are moments of silence if they’re both breathing in at the same time.   Experimentation in Painting, Then Dance The Museum of Modern Art, New York. I had been making these enormous abstract expressionist action paintings, and I didn’t know what to do with them. In January 2016, Athena Christa Holbrook, collection specialist in MoMA’s department of media and performance art, traveled to the Netherlands to gain a deeper understanding of Forti’s Dance Constructions. That their gaze doesn’t turn inwards. At Yoko Ono’s loft in 1960, she debuted her Dance Constructions, so called, as she has explained, because they are “dance[s] but [they] also can be seen as sculpture[s] made of people.”1 Improvisation and chance shape the individual works that together comprise the Dance Constructions, which are characterized by understated, shifting movements, sounds, and formations. A piece performed in silence, involves six to nine performers interlocking their bodies a... Then spent six months in Bern while Milka was ill ] 1960 Roller. Two performers—each one in one of the boxes—whistle spent six months in Bern while was. 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