echo/archive

Choreographer/performer Elena Demyanenko and filmmaker Erika Mijlin offered a work-in-progress performance of their EMPAC-commissioned collaboration, echo/archive.

echo/archive explores the notion of bodily heritage—how one’s sense and memory of their body may be felt and communicated over generations. Within dance, this is the process that carries movement invention and somatic perspectives from artist to artist. The piece also explores the role of the mediated image, live or recorded, as an intervention and a partner in the creative investigation of past and present. Incorporating lighting, audio, and video, Demyankenko and Mijlin worked with performers Dana Reitz, Eva Karczag and Jodi Melnick, as well as video designer Ray Sun. Karczag and Melnick, like Demyanenko, both worked with the late American choreographer Trisha Brown. The work-in-progress performance focused on one of the show’s three parts: Demyanenko’s duet with Melnick.