JPMW presents

Small Dances in the Park

In partnership with SF Botanical garden

September 3, 2022

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ABOUT JPMW

With attention to process, form, and nuance, JPMW creates and presents dance and dance happenings that affirm the meaningful state of our subtle, fragile bodies in relationship to place, phenomena and the present moment.

We use improvisational and authentic movement practices as investigative methods towards sensation, pleasure, and the experience of seeing and being seen. These collaborative, real-time practices dissolve potential hierarchical structures of artistic process as well as habitual, learned movement patterns, and engage the work instead in an ongoing conversation with the body as memory, culture, and place.

We are curious about transferring the raw and spontaneous experience of process into performance, and in the artistic activation of shared space as a form of solidarity and collective care.

 Small Dances in the Park

Small Dances in the Park creatively unpacks the stops and starts of making and sharing public art through the recent transitionary waning of the pandemic. Valuing process, form, and an ethics of solidarity care, Small Dances was created with an intentional indirection, focusing rather on the dynamics between pause and possibility, the accumulation of heartbreaks and unknowns, and the sometimes surprising gifts found amidst loss.

Conceived and Directed by Jennifer Perfilio

Performance and Co-Creation by Styles Alexander, Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano, and Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Original Sound Score by Clark Buckner

Site Manager: Clarissa Ko

Styling by Jennifer Perfilio and the Performers

Run Time approx. 65 mins

Please Click on Performers’ Names above to read their Artist Bio.

Arriving

Styles Alexander, Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano, Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Measuring/Wreck

Phoenicia Pettyjohn, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano

Swarm

Styles Alexander

WIth Real Time Sound Performance by Samuel Melecio-Zambrano and Clark Buckner

Depth of Field

Styles Alexander, Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Response

In Order of Appearance:

Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano, Styles Alexander

With Writing Responses created by Styles Alexander and Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Colors

Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano

Long Time Friend

Phoenicia Pettyjohn

Mapping

Samuel Melecio-Zambrano

With Real Time Sound Performance by Phoenicia Pettyjohn and Clark Buckner

Back to the Things

Styles Alexander, Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano, Phoenicia Pettyjohn

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We acknowledge that we gather today on Yelamu, the unceded ancestral lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We honor the Ramaytush Ohlone for their enduring commitment to mother earth, and recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. JPMW has made a donation to the Yunakin Land tax, and encourages all non-Indigenous people living in this region to do the same. We acknowledge that no amount of money will undo the damage caused by colonization and land theft, but that this is one step in the process of repair. ramaytush.org

THANK YOU

Thank you to San Francisco Botanical Garden for their partnership in this project, and specifically to Fiona Duong for her assistance in bringing Small Dances to the Great Meadow.

Thank you to Clark Buckner for his ongoing inspiration, music-making, support, and creativity within our many collaborations, artistically and beyond.

Thank you to Shareen DeRyan and Emma Lanier for their co-creation of the initial iteration of this work; and to Shareen DeRyan for her directorial assistance in creating Small Dances for the Botanical Gardens, and continued commitment to this process.

Thank you to Styles Alexander, Emily Hansel, Samuel Melecio-Zambrano, and Phoenicia Pettyjohn for their courage and flexibility, thoughtful practice, commitment to art-making, and generous co-creation in the making of this iteration of Small Dances.

Thank you to our Site Manager Clarissa Ko, and to Site Assistants Jules Buckner, Daisy Meritt, and Cruz Morrison for keeping the show running smoothly!

Thank You, our audience, who continue to show up. We are ever grateful.

Thanks for individual donations and support from Jennifer Bishop-Orsulak and Jack Orsulak, Erika Malzberg and Will Getter, Elizabeth Nichols, Marilyn and Joseph Perfilio, Meredith Sterkle, Kristin Tieche, Sunny Vraitch.

 Thank you for supporting JPMW.

Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works is a fiscally sponsored project of Dancers’ Group.

Our not for profit dance organization is committed to fostering the vitality of dance through collaboration, support for other artists, and collective community engagement.

The realization of our work thrives on your support. Please consider making a tax deductible donation.