

Performa Studio is conceived as a public, process-based program, placing emphasis on the creative research, experimentation, and learning, that occurs during the artistic process within a studio environment, to consider what it means to think with both mind and body.
ALL PERFORMA STUDIO EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Artists and choreographers Moriah Evans and Isabel Lewis have devised a program of open rehearsals, classes, participatory group work, and talks, uniting choreography, movement, somatic practices, sound, music, and discussion in a specially designed space by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro—housing an exploratory program that fosters collaboration with both participants and audiences, creating a community space for events of all kinds.
Each artist’s program considers what dance and movement can mean as a social, collaborative, political act, to consider the formation of individual movement and collective movement. Throughout the Performa Studio program, Evans and Lewis will address a series of fundamental questions: What does it mean to move as an individual and what does it mean to move as a group? What is the relationship between individual and collective consciousness? What differentiates vigorous collective movements from chaos? And what roles can structured choreographic movement, and seemingly chaotic, unstructured movement, play in creating societal change?

CHASING THE FRAMWORK is an open framework centering improvisational performance to excavate thematic structures within the body. Rooted in Blackness, abstraction, and relentless exploration, it seeks to unearth possibilities beyond the confines of our current reality and dismantle oppressive systems like white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and sexism. We start by conceptualizing repetition and exploring themes of cyclical patterns in behavior, thoughts, and ideas. We use somatic practices and ideas from childhood to unlock an otherwise possibility to imagine space outside of everything complexed.