Meshroom: Choreographing Communities

My research project focused on the creation and contextualization of Meshroom, a performance environment with an open dance floor, occasional performances, and live music. It aims to gather interdisciplinary thinkers and movers into a movement-oriented space of experimentation to question the norms that prevail in arts-presenting spaces and to resist hegemonic modes of bodily and social organization. In developing the work, I primarily drew from two embodied disciplines, butoh and social choreography. While using the theoretical and practical understandings of both movement systems to develop the concept, event structure, choreographic and atmospheric prompts, and audience community, I curated Meshroom six times over the course of a year at Duke University. Through curation and repetition as methodology, I developed the “Meshroom Tech Rider,” which proposes five aesthetic conditions that enable Meshroom: a fluid choreographic format, interpersonal and multisensory invitations, autonomous visitors and decentralized language, disruption of the social skin, and care.