Join us for an intimate conversation between Melissa West (Snug Harbor’s VP of Curation, Visual & Performing Arts) and Kathy Westwater, choreographer/artist. Westwater’s exhibition, PARK Ephemera, is currently on view at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art through the end of the year.
WHEN: December 14 | 7:00 PM – 8:15 PM
WHERE: Virtual via Zoom | Registration requested here
ADMISSION: Free
With PARK Ephemera, choreographer Kathy Westwater presents a collection of work emerging from PARK, her nearly fifteen-year choreographic inquiry into the site of the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, New York. Once the largest landfill in the world, the site is currently being transformed into a public park, a transition that Westwater has closely witnessed through her dance, somatic, and material practice.
Kathy Westwater, described by the New Yorker as “an unconventional choreographer experiencing a surge of recognition” has choreographically pursued radical dance forms since 1996. Her work responds to the social landscape in which it manifests, often by taking up our most challenging experiences such as pain, as in her Bessie-nominated work Rambler, Worlds A Part (2019). With other major works she has explored the built environments of monuments (Anywhere, 2016) and landfills and parks (PARK, 2009-present); war and pain (Macho, 2008); intersections of human and animal culture (twisted, tack, broken, 2005); psycho-physical states of fear (Dark Matter, 2002); and interactive virtual environments (The Fortune Cookie Dance, 1999). Westwater is the recipient of the 2017 Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography, the first woman to receive the prize. She was born in Virginia, grew up in Kentucky, and lives in the Bronx, NYC.
PARK Ephemera is made possible through generous support from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
