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?

Performances:
Nov 4th 7pm (during the Opening Reception)
Nov 6th 4pm
Nov 19th 5pm (followed by a performance by LA-based vocal artist Odeya Nini, more info below)
Dec 2nd 8pm (during First Friday Reception)
Dec 18 2pm (during Gallery Talk)

All events are FREE.

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