Work Up 4.3

MELANIE GREENE
SUMMER MINERVA
EMMAGRACE SKOVE-EPES

March 16 – 17 at 8:00 pm
The White Box
Gibney 280 Broadway

Melanie Greene: Sapphire
Sapphire is a time traveling golden goddess moving through moments that police and celebrate Black female bodies and experience. She is humanity canvassed in an evolving constellation of identity. She is a reflection to see you and see through you…a vessel of love, ferocity, grief and audacity.

Summer Minerva: Femminiello/Belonging
Femminiello/Belonging is a prayer to unite disparate layers of identity. It is a ritual to bring together the parts of me that have died with the parts of me that are yet to be reborn. It calls upon the spirits of my italian ancestors, my queer and trans ancestors and my living beacons of love, wholeness and infinity.

EmmaGrace Skove-Epes: in search of mirrors, and catch the light just right
in search of mirrors, and catch the light just right constructs and unravels real, remembered and imagined landscapes and environments, transposed onto and melded into the performance space. It serves as the enactment of a desire to be at once in private and in public, a desire to find intimacy and preservation through self-abstraction and knowing but not naming. There is a desire to listen to the particular resonance of an unfamiliar but familiar space, to hear how static sounds and friction feels different at different times of day. Where is the physical mark of these day-dreamt sensations, where do they leak—seep out and stain? How does the physical impact of imagination reflect in the spaces and bodies that house it? We activate the space between us, and it activates us. The pace of my breath and fluids finds the pace of yours. The weight of my bones and muscle shift when you speak to me. My eyes are touched by what I see, my eyes touch what I see. Your ears touch and are touched through listening, skin too. Our breaths meet somewhere beyond us, quietly. Are these meeting grounds, these touches—portals/ghosts/quiet spells cast?

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Melanie Greene, 2017 Bessie Award Recipient, is a movement artist swirling on the edge of impossible, swimming in the sea of the minority. She has presented work at Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, WOW Cafe, and BAAD. She has received support from the Gibney Dance boo-koo Space Grant, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency, Actors Fund Summer Push Grant, and Dancing While Black Fellowship. Greene is a contributing writer for The Dance Enthusiast and while happy to be a southern New York transplant, will gladly keep buttery biscuits, country ham, and collard greens. www.methodsofperception.com

Summer Minerva is performing artist, writer, and educator.

EmmaGrace Skove-Epes is a movement-based artist, performer, teacher, organizer, and Brooklyn native. Her work has been shown at venues including NYLA (Fresh Tracks, in collaboration with Jonathan Gonzalez), Roulette, and Center for Performance Research. She is currently dancing with Edisa Weeks, Jesse Philips-Fein, and RoseAnne Spradlin, and formerly danced with Peniel Guerrier, Jon Kinzel, Jodi Melnick, and Kathy Westwater, among others. EmmaGrace is a teaching artist through NYLA, and has taught at Bard College, NYU, Third Root, and other studios. She co-curated the 2017 Movement Research Fall Festival, and actively organizes with Artists Co-Creating Real Equity and Breaking White Silence.

Photo: Melanie Greene by Ian Douglas