We Are Still Watching
Co-presented with the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)’s Crossing the Line Festival 2014
Returning to the Live Arts theater for the first time since her Dance Theater Workshop performances in 2006, Ivana Müller presents two thought-provoking works, Partituur and We Are Still Watching.
A work in which the idea of “spectacle” slowly shifts to where we least expect it, We Are Still Watching assumes the form of a theatrical “read through,” in which each audience member, given a script, assumes his or her own individual role in the play. Reflecting on the idea of theater and its place in contemporary society, the work was partly inspired by cultural policy and contemporary democracies. Navigating the text collectively, the audience members form a temporary mini-society in which all spectators are the only participants. By reading the script aloud together each performance unfolds as a completely unique experience, where the audience creates and performs as a community.
Wed, Oct 1 Stay Late Discussion: Social Theater: When Spectators Become Participants, Simon Dove, co-curator of Crossing the Line, in conversation with Ivana Müller.
Crossing the Line is the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)’s annual fall festival presenting interdisciplinary works and performances created by artists from around the world in New York. The festival provides opportunities for New Yorkers to explore the dialogue between artist and participant, examine how artists help re-imagine the world, and engage in the vital role artists play as critical thinkers and catalysts for social evolution. Crossing the Line is initiated and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading cultural institutions and takes place this year from September 8–October 18, 2014.
Presentations of Partituur and We Are Still Watching are supported, in part, by FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance, a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange), with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional funding from the Florence Gould Foundation and the support of the Institut français through the TransARTE program.
