Jennifer Monson’s newest work, Live Dancing Archive, is a visceral exploration of the dancing body as a physical archive of experience and place. Drawing from more than a decade of dance-based environmental research, Live Dancing Archive has been choreographed using material from video documentation of The BIRD BRAIN Osprey Migration (2002)—an eight-week dance project along the Atlantic Flyway—in addition to improvised scores accumulated over the past decade. The full evening-length solo performance is accompanied by two additional components, a video installation and a digital archive, which query the process of archiving as well as the shifting nature of dance and environmental phenomena.  

Proposing that the body has the possibility of archiving and revisiting multiple scales of experience, Monson specifically looks at the way experiences of the environment and ecological dependencies are registered through physical movement. The work further explores how Monson’s navigation of her own queer, feminist, and animal-like body has shaped relationships to cultural and social phenomena. Live Dancing Archive negotiates and explores what a queer ecology might offer for dancing bodies and rapidly shifting conceptions of environment and place.

Collaborators include video installation by Robin Vachal, sound design by Jeff Kolar, lighting design by Joe Levasseur, costume design by Susan Becker, and digital archive design by Young Jae Bae.

The full video installation will be on view in the theater Tuesday through Friday, 12–6pm and Saturday, 11am–6pm from February 15–23.