On November 19 at 5:00pm, join us for two special performances by member artist Meg Foley and visiting artist Odeya Nini that look at the potential of the solo body as material, in voice and in movement.
Meg Foley will present the undergird (action is primary study #4) as part of Everything All The Time. Based in action is primary, the improvisational practice Foley has spent 6 years developing, the undergird began with the intention to build and perform a largely improvised speech – that is a dance and a spoken performance – about death and mortality. It has evolved into a real-time examination where the sensation inside the body meets and reflects upon the experience of grief, maternal lineage, birth, and how things begin. An intimate movement-based performance, the undergird mines the entwined loss and expansion of improvisation to speak to time passing through and on the experiential body and to look at the objectified, static idea of a (acceptable, recognizable) body of our culture. How can a speech be a dance? What does it feel like to speak to what’s immediate and hard to say? What language brings us closer to what is deeply known but difficult to name?
Additional performances of the undergird will take place Dec 2nd 8pm (during First Friday Reception) and on Dec 18 2pm (during the Nov-Dec exhibitions Gallery Talk.)
Odeya Nini will present A Solo Voice. Evolving over the last five years, A Solo Voice by Odeya Nini is an investigation of extended vocal techniques, resonance and pure expression, exploring the relationship between mind and body and the various landscapes it can yield. The work is a series of malleable compositions and improvisations that include field recordings and theatrical elements, aiming to dissociate the voice from its traditional attributes and create a new logic of song that is not only heard but seen through movement. Through multi-dimensionality that serves to both provoke and soothe in abstract communication, the voice is presented in its spectrum of natures as it travels through cultures, ages, emotions and colors, like photographs, with tender intimacy and bold aberrance.
About the artists:
Meg Foley is a Philadelphia-based performer, choreographer, and director of moving parts, the name she ascribes to her various dance- and performance-based actions that explore the materiality of dance and physical identity as form. Her current research focuses on the nature and affect of ongoing improvisational practice and on improvisation and choreography as simultaneous practices of performance. Her work has been presented locally by the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival, Bowerbird, Thirdbird, and Icebox Project Space, and in New York City, Los Angeles, Canada, Germany, and Poland.
Her research has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Independence Foundation, and through a 2013 Stary Browar Cultural Exchange Residency (Poland). She is creative co-director of The Whole Shebang, an interdisciplinary arts space and studio in South Philadelphia that hosts workshops and classes and provides studio rental to artists at affordable rates.
movingpartsdance.org // thewholeshebangphilly.com // actionisprimary.com
Odeya Nini is a Los Angeles based experimental vocalist and contemporary composer. At the locus of her interests are textural harmony, gesture, tonal animation, and the illumination of minute sounds, in works spanning chamber music to vocal pieces and collages of musique concrète. Her solo vocal work extends the dimension and expression of the voice and body, creating a sonic and physical panorama of silence to noise and tenderness to grandeur. Odeya has collaborated extensively with dancers, visual artist, filmmakers and theater directors as both a composer and soloist and has worked with artists such as Meredith Monk, Butch Morris and LA’s contemporary orchestra – Wild Up. She holds a BFA from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music where she studied with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and an MFA in composition from California Institute of the Arts.
Odeya’s work has been presented at venues and festivals across the US and internationally, such as The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Joyce Soho, and Art Basel Miami, from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, Canada, Mongolia, Madagascar and Vietnam.
