Between Gestures: Trajal Harrell and Ola Maciejewska

Free with Admission

Program Schedule

10:30 am–Noon
Notes on Agency, Dance in the Museum Panel Discussion with January Parkos Arnall, Hendrik Folkerts, Elizabeth Lebovici, and Mlondi Zondi in the Commons

Noon–4:30 pm
Selections of rare performance footage from the Nouvelle Cinémathèque de la Danse screen in the Commons

12:15–12:45 pm
Trajal Harrell performs Okidoki in the Kovler Atrium

2–2:40 pm
Ola Maciejewski performs LOIE FULLER: Research in the Kovler Atrium

3:30–4 pm
Trajal Harrell performs Okidoki in the Kovler Atrium

Two solo pieces, by choreographers Trajal Harrell and Ola Maciejewska, unfold over an afternoon in the museum’s public spaces. Each artist approaches performances of the past through their own physical practices and philosophical perspectives in the present, to intervene into dance history—and into the white walls of the museum itself.

Additonally, selections from the Nouvelle Cinémathèque de la Danse screen in the Commons over the course of the day featuring a program of rare performance clips that resonate with thematic and historical threads presented in the on-site performances.

This program is a part of Between Gestures, a one-week festival connecting Chicago to international contemporary performance and dance through performances, workshops, conversations, and screenings, proposed by the Cultural Service of the Consulate of France in Chicago and the Goethe Institut Chicago.

Ola Maciejewska’s LOIE FULLER: Research considers the agency of objects and actions, and reflects on the relationship between sculptor and sculpture. Human movement sculpts matter into form in this sparse performance based on the works of Loïe Fuller, often regarded to be a precursor to American modern dance.

Trajal Harrell’s Okidoki is the latest solo in his series of works made for gallery spaces that interrogate the cracks and fissures of history. It emerges from his research into runway movement as a dance vocabulary that proposes a theoretical conversation between postmodern dance, voguing, and Japanese butoh.

Image: Ola Maciejewska, LOIE FULLER: Research, Photo: Martin Argyroglo