Dancing the Archives: Emerging Choreographers and Living History

Schedule of Events:
Check-in at Doheny Library Main Entrance.
12 p.m.: Performances at Alumni Park, EF Hutton Park, and McCarthy Quad
1 p.m.: Panel Discussion at Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP beginning Thursday, January 16, at 9 a.m.

RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
In celebration of the recently debuted USC Dance Heritage Video Archive Project (DHVA), emerging, Los Angeles–based choreographers Chris Emile, Jinglin Liao, and Marina Magalhães will explore materials housed in USC’s renowned cultural repositories: The DHVA, ONE Archives, the California Historical Society Collection, and the Los Angeles City Archives. The choreographers will draw inspiration from the archive materials as well as the architectural landscapes in and around Doheny Memorial Library to create simultaneous, site-specific dance works to be enjoyed by roving audiences.

Afterward, choreographers and audience members will come together for an interactive panel led by legendary choreographer Bebe Miller, who has spearheaded a variety of digital archive projects. The conversation will focus on the creative processes and illuminate the ways in which students, artists, and the community can engage with archives, not just as static spaces for preservation but as storehouses of cultural memory rich with possibilities for future creativity.

BIOS:
Chris Emile is a choreographer, performer, and director based in Los Angeles. He received his formal education from the Alvin Ailey School and the Alonzo King LINES Ballet/Dominican University joint program receiving his BFA in dance. He is the co-founder/curator for movement based collective No)one. Art House, which has programmed site-specific performances, educational workshops, and installations throughout Los Angeles since 2019. His work has been presented by Hauser & Wirth, the Getty Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, and the California African American Museum, among others. Chris’s choreographic work has been commissioned by LA Opera in Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize–winning opera p r I s m, SF Symphony, Solange Knowles, Anderson Paak, and Refinery 29. He has been a guest lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, AMDA, and Loyola Marymount University.

Jinglin Liao is an interdisciplinary choreographer and performer working actively in fields related to body. Inspired by animals’ alertness, her aim is to transform classical/traditional movement to individual body language together with a sense of danger. Using human instinct, impulse, emotions, and voice to trigger movement is another way she experiments in her choreography. Jinglin received her MFA in Choreography with a minor in Integrated Media from CalArts in 2019. Her current works include Something About Heads, Cat’s cradle, Seek, Cross the River, and Uncapturable. Jinglin has also had the opportunity to work with incredible choreographers/artists, including Julie Bour, Dimitri Chamblas, Maxine Doyle, Rosanna Gamson, Tamara Rosenblum, Gerard & Kelly, and Hou Ying Dance Theater.

Marina Magalhães is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and dance-and-change-maker from Brazil based in Los Angeles. Her work is rooted in decolonial diasporic praxis, wherein ancestral, ritual, and social practices are located as fertile sites for choreographic inquiry, pedagogic encounters, and political possibility. She has shared her work throughout the U.S., Brazil, Cuba, Botswana, South Africa, Germany, and France, earning her an LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Choreography. Magalhães holds a BA in World Arts & Cultures/Dance from UCLA and an MFA in Dance from University of the Arts. She founded the Dancing Diaspora platform (funded by California Arts Council since 2017) and is a Visiting Lecturer at Scripps College.

Bebe Miller’s vision of dance and performance resides in her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience, and beauty. Her aesthetic relies on the interplay of a work’s idea, its physicality, and the contributions of company members to fashion its singular voice. In 1985, Bebe launched the Bebe Miller Company to expand the language of dance through work encompassing choreography, writing, film, and video and digital media. She has received four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, and many others. She was a United States Artists Ford Fellow, received one of the first Doris Duke Artists Awards and a New York Live Arts’ 2013 David White Award, and was a 2015 Movement Research Honoree. A Distinguished Professor in Dance at The Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Humanities from 2000–2016, Miller received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Ursinus College in 2009

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Patrick Corbin (Dance), Alison D’Amato (Dance), and Tim Stanton (USC Libraries).