Presented in conjunction with “Rethinking the Imprint of Judson Dance Theater Fifty Years Later: Movement Research in Residence” as part of the New Museum’s RE:NEW RE:PLAY Performance Residence Series, this was a two-part program featuring performance by Mårten Spångberg followed by a discussion addressing the distinctive imprint of Judson Dance Theater within European and American performance contexts. In the event, DD Dorvillier, Sarah Michelson, and Claude Wampler joined Spångberg in conversation.


Performance: Mårten Spångberg

In Powered by Emotion, Swedish choreographer Mårten Spångberg reconstructs the Goldberg Variations—the fantastic dance improvisations by the American dance legend Steve Paxton—and several songs from the Buena Vista Social Club. Paxton himself views Spångberg’s piece as actually standing alone, more than simply being a reconstruction. Can one reconstruct an improvisation? This question is not as interesting as the result of Spångberg’s “translation process” itself.


Discussion: The Judson Imprint in European and American Contexts

In the second part of the evening, Spångberg was joined by artists including DD Dorvillier and Sarah Michelson, and addressed the following question: How does the imprint of Judson Dance Theater function within the contexts of European and American performance respectively?


Mårten Spångberg is a performance-related artist, choreographer, and theoretic living and working in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been active on stage as a performer and creator since 1994, and, since 1999, has created his own choreographies, from solos to larger scale works, which have toured internationally. He has collaborated with Xavier Le Roy, Christine De Smedt/Les Ballets C de la B, Jan Ritsema, and Krõõt Juurak, among others. With the architect Tor Lindstrand he initiated the International Festival, an interdisciplinary practice merging architecture and choreography/performance. From 1996 until 2005, Spångberg organized and curated festivals both in Sweden and internationally. He initiated the network organization INPEX in 2006. He has thorough experience in teaching both theory and practice. Since 2008, he has been Director of the MA program in Choreography at the University of Dance in Stockholm.

DD Dorvillier has been developing her work in New York since 1989. With Jennifer Monson she created the Matzoh Factory in 1991, a site for experimentation where choreographers and artists congregated for low-res shows, rehearsals, parties, and readings. She’s worked with Monson, Zeena Parkins, Jennifer Lacey, Yvonne Meier, Sarah Michelson, and Karen Finley, among many others. She has been a Movement Research Artist in Residence, curator of the MR Festival, and coeditor of the performance journal Release.

Sarah Michelson’s work has been presented and commissioned by BAM, P.S.122, The Kitchen, the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, Danspace Project, Movement Research, the Walker Art Center, On the Boards, ODC Theater, and Chapter Arts in Cardiff, Wales; and has toured to Cutting Edge Festival, Frankfurt, Venice Biennale, SommerSzene, Salzburg, Tanz im August, Berlin, and Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Zurich. Michelson has been awarded two Bessies, a Doris Duke Artist Award, the 2012 Bucksbaum Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, and the 2006 Alpert Award in Dance.

Claude Wampler, an artist who often works in the context of visual art but also makes works for the stage, earned a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and has been exhibiting and mounting work in the US and internationally since 1998. Wampler was Visiting Artist in the NYU Steinhardt MFA Studio Art Program, faculty at the University of Virginia in the McIntire Department of Art, teaching Performance and Installation Art.