Interglacial is a new multidisciplinary dance work through which choreographer Laura Peterson explores the urgent topic of global climate emergency, inspired by minimalist geometric art and Land Art of the 1960s and ’70s. A dance and visual art installation project, Interglacial is about deep time and the dynamics of nature that is designed to create a space for reflection on human impacts on the Arctic region of the earth and to encourage climate activism. In the piece, four dancers transform an icy landscape into 12-foot sculptures evoking a terrain inhabited and ultimately overwhelmed by cleaving glaciers.
“In Interglacial, I am trying to understand the devastating effects humans have had on our environment,” said choreographer and Artistic Director of Open Arts Studio Laura Peterson. “I’m exploring the intersection of the human body with landscapes and non-human phenomena. This work has a particular focus on the qualities of time, from the hyperspeeds of the digital world to the impossibly slow travels of a glacier across a continent, as it drags rocky material toward the sea.”
Interglacial dwells in a space of cognitive dissonance between the many thousands of years that span a glacial period, and the hyper-accelerated progress of environmental destruction. The current interglacial period has lasted 11,000 years and whether there will ever be another ice age on Earth is a topic of current scientific debate. Things that were once predictable, like rainfall patterns, are now on a roulette wheel. This project explores how somewhere deep in our bones we may have an imprint of Earth’s geological slow dance, incremental shifts over eons, and now we are literally witnessing to a dizzying enactment of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, species death, and rising sea levels via news media and lived experiences.
Interglacial
- December 8-11, 2021 at 7:30pm
- Performed by Laura Peterson, Ching-I Chang, Jennifer Payán, and Darrin Wright.
- Sound design by Omar Zubair
- Lighting design by Amanda K Ringger
- Costumes by Charles Youssef
- Installation design by Laura Peterson
Tickets are $18 in advance ($21 at the door) and can be purchased online.
Interglacial is a Dixon Place commission made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor’s office and the NY State Legislature; and private funds from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, and Harkness Foundation for Dance.
In research and development since August 2018, Interglacial has been supported by a development commission for the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, a workshop performance at HERE Arts Center’s Culturemart Festival and by the WallPlay program at On|Canal.
Laura Peterson is a NYC-based dance artist creating works that challenge the limits of physicality and reframe performance spaces. Influenced by the visual art of the 1970s, she simultaneously creates visually arresting installations and rigorous choreography. Her performances have included large-scale paintings, 1000 square feet of living lawn, 16-foot-tall paper sculptures, and other giant structures. Recently, she performed her work SOLO as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done. Peterson’s work has also been presented in the US at venues including The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, and internationally in Europe and Argentina.
Laura has been awarded residencies and commissions for the last ten years, including the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). She was a recipient of a 2014 Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, and a 2016 Marble House Project Residency. Her work has been commissioned by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Queens Museum of Art, and she has received the Reflection/ Response Commission supported by Temple University, et al. Laura created two works for Nick Cave’s Soundsuits with Balance Dance Company and the Boise Art Museum, and repertory for Pennsylvania Ballet and Hartford Ballet.
She has taught dance and choreographed for Princeton University, Marymount Manhattan College, Rutgers University, SUNY Brockport, LIU Brooklyn, CUNY Lehman College, Bowdoin College, and others. Laura has led workshops in the US and internationally. She holds an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA in Modern Dance from University of the Arts in Philadelphia.