Echo/archive premiere scheduled for Friday
TROY, N.Y. » The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center is presenting the world premiere of echo/archive, blending live dance and video to chart the way movement is imprinted on the human body.
The echo/archive premiere is scheduled for 8 p.m. on Friday at EMPAC, located on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus at 110 Eighth St. in Troy.
Developed over the past year at EMPAC, echo/archive combines live dance with live and pre-recorded video to reflect the layers of memory and heritage that exist in each human body.
This project is a performance collaboration between choreographer Elena Demyanenko and filmmaker Erika Mijlin.
Elena Demyanenko is a Russian-born dancer and choreographer who has been performing, teaching, and choreographing in New York City since 2001. She was a member of Trisha Brown and Stephen Petronio Dance Companies, and has danced for choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, collecting the movement vocabulary of these modern dance icons within her body.
“Echo/archive is a dialogue between female dance/movement artists of different aesthetic genealogies – women who bookend a generation of dance history,” Demyanenko explained in a video on the project.
Erika Mijlin is a producer, editor, writer, and founding partner of the media production company Artifact Pictures. Working closely with Demyanenko to integrate three channels of live and pre-recorded video within the show’s choreography, Mijlin and video designer Ray Sun expand on the piece’s themes of legacy, relationship, and female artmaking by reflecting the performers’ movements across a series of onstage monitors.
Echo/archive is an exploration of how movement is imprinted upon the body and subsequently communicated between dancers and across generations. Working with performers Dana Reitz, Eva Karczag, and Jodi Melnick, the performance spans a generation and genealogy of dance history.
Tickets to Friday’s events are available online at $18 each, with discounts for staff, students and seniors. Details on other upcoming EMPAC events can be found online at empac.rpi. edu.