Performing with Canopy by Elyce Elder, Harrison Center for the Arts. Photo (c) P. Baumgarten
Primarily site specific, even when simply in consideration of a proscenium stage.
Always as motivated by bodies in conversation --- with architecture, with art, and with one another.
This is a brief catalogue of work in this category. For complete works and artist statements in this category see AMovingMaterial.
To request a CV with list of commissions, exhibitions, and choreography hires, click below.
Centre Pompidou
Paris, France
Invited by Dr. Ana Sanchez-Colburg to collaborate with five graduate research students at London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama to create performance in conversation with art and architecture in and around France’s premiere contemporary art museum, The Pompidou Center.
The works were performed with several others as a part of an event entitled Urban-I-City on Thursday, May 15, 2008 during the museums’ open hours.
Digitailia
Harrisonburg, VA
Choreographed for the Virginia Repertory Dance Company as a visiting artist at James Madison University in 2017. Seven dancers perform gesture and sound inspired by the digital, or movement and sound that emphasizes human relationship, emotion, and story. Their relationship to the audience moves from close, intimate, and unpredictable in the lobby during intermission, to distant, and predictable in the proscenium theatre space. We experience modern American life as constant interplay between digital, electronic interactions and emotional, human experience. It is equal parts poignant and comical, full of patterns, caricature, expectations, and subtleties.
Leda And The Swan
London, UK
An early foray into developing story telling choreography with text and live music, in conversation with architecture. Leda and the Swan, as a movement/poetry play was performed multiple times as part of an arts event of the same name in London, Shoreditch’s historic St. Leonard’s church developed in collaboration with six international performing artists and musicians.
Reversed Thunder
Holland, MI
Hired in 2019 to make a collaborative performance event for Dimnent Chapel around the Book of Revelation. Live performance elements included organ music, three dancers, three text performers, natural light through stained glass, and the progression of the audience through the space in relation to these things.
Death Becomes Her
London, UK, Indianapolis & Raleigh, USA
Invites the viewer to consider an alternative example of the grieving individual. It is based on a collection of poems about grief by 19th century poet Thomas Hardy. PJ Maske and Singer/Songwriter, Bruce Benedict have performed this in collaboration with installation artists, clothing designers, and a dancer/choreographer in various locations including the US and UK. To read artists’ statements from the various iterations click Here and Here
Fertile Crescent
Raleigh, NC
A durational performance installation in consideration of overlapping territories of fertility, grief, and protection, by installation artist, Gabrielle Duggan and PJ Maske as movement artist. Installed into AntFarm Studios Gallery, Raleigh, NC in March of 2013 and performed for three and a half hours, during which time Maske, moved through a repeated cycle of physical sowing, waiting and reaping. Also on display were video monitors showing footage of three stages of the creation of the performance installation and an interactive display inviting viewers to join in planting a seed, washing in water and reaping (or our chosen representation of reaping- eating).
People In My Family Die In Modern Ways
San Francisco, CA
A solo durational performance installation that is still in process. In observation of the tensions and ethical dilemmas that modern medicine causes surrounding Death, Dying Processes and Death’s role in Life. The trials pictured took place in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco in collaboration with installation artist Gabrielle Duggan. The initial trials were out of doors as we consider the interplay between organic and synthetic materials that takes place in the performance of the body under medicalization and within the hospital assisted dying process.
Skulls and Cars
Holland, MI
Dance for DePree Gallery, created with Hope College dance and theatre students as a visiting artist in 2015, based on and in conversation with sculpture by Billy Mayer for the opening of 440 in 2016.