Alpert award winning choreographer Jeanine Durning comes together with a group of stellar woman dance artists and thinkers for the making of The Invitation Situation, a choreo-performance experiment based on Durning’s signature movement practice, nonstopping. Following a basic desire to “practice together,” Jeanine was invited by Andee Scott, Mary Williford-Shade, Heidi Brewer, and Clare Croft in the midst of 2021 pandemic lock downs to share her practice over Zoom which then soon developed into the desire to create a performance together. Building on the initial invitation, as well as the situation of being in 3 different states and 2 countries, The Invitation Situation highlights the labor and intelligence of the dancer’s enduring desire to move and build something together. Teetering at the edge of what could be in an ever-shifting environment, this choreography exposes both the precision and precarity of the dancer’s decision-making from moment to moment, somewhere between personal agency and collective will – grappling with time, place, and makeshift meanings.
Choreography and Direction by Jeanine Durning, made for and with Andee Scott, Mary Williford-Shade, Heidi Brewer, and Clare Croft.
Performance Duration: 50-55 minutes
Masking is optional. Doors will open at 6:30pm.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Jeanine Durning is an Alpert Award winning performance maker whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having both “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.” She’s been investigating the mobilizing force of bodies and grappling with their conditions in time and space for over 25 years through choreography, performance, practice-based research, teaching, and mentoring. She’s been invited to share her practices all over the world, and her most recent collaborations were with Candoco Dance Company, creating Last Shelter which premiered at Sadler’s Wells/London in 2021 and had toured internationally for the last two years, and with Norrdans creating Everlasting – a new love, which toured throughout Sweden in 2023. jeaninedurning.com
Heidi Brewer has worked as a dance artist in Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles and St. Petersburg since 2001, showing work and teaching in LA, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Florida. She is a Certified Pilates teacher through the Kane School & kinected in NYC, where she also works as the Communications Director. Heidi is a Pilates Instructor, Kane School teacher trainer and co-director of the Pilates certification program at Body Center St. Pete. She is forever thankful for this group of incredible nonstopping women.
Clare Croft is a writer, a dance historian, and theorist; a person who dances; and sometimes a curator and dramaturg, too. She is the author of Her Disruptions: Dancing with Jill Johnston, forthcoming from Duke University Press in October; and the editor and curator of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings. Clare is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan.
Andee Scott is an interdisciplinary dance artist based in St. Petersburg, FL, and she is currently living her best life nonstopping with Jeanine Durning and these amazing women. Andee was a member of Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks and Blue Lapis Light in Austin, TX, and Deja Donne in Italy, and is on faculty at the University of South Florida.
Mary Williford-Shade is a teacher, performer and movement analyst based in Denton, Texas. She began dancing at the age of 21, had a performance/teaching career spanning 40 years working professionally with Maryland Dance Theater, Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, Daniel West Dancers, Mark Taylor and Friends, Mark Dendy Dancers and Lacy & Shade Solo-Duet Company and teaching nationally and internationally including the Bates Dance Festival and the American Dance Festival. While successful throughout her career, quoted in the NY Times as “extraordinary" and awarded a Professor Emeritus title from Texas Woman’s University, Mary couldn’t be more excited and privileged to work with Jeanine Durning on this nonstopping project with such incredible women artists.
Photography by Sorcha Augustine from The Invitation Situation (2023) presented by Sarasota Contemporary Dance's In-Studio Series.
