Exhibition
Ilya Vidrin: Everything You Do Matters, No Matter What You Do
05/01/22-09/15/22
Conversations · Exhibition-Related
Feeling Beyond Touch: Language, Health, and Care in Partnering
Cover Image:
Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall. Photo: Olivia Moon Photography 2020
Join New Museum artist-in-residence Ilya Vidrin and guest speakers for an exploration of Somatic Partnering, a bodily technique that brings deep attention to language, health, and care within and between participants. The event begins with Vidrin performing this practice, followed by a brief guided, participatory movement exercise suitable for all bodies. Next, a preview screening and discussion of Vidrin’s Considered Care (2022), an intimate meditation on the labor of manifesting care in and through physical resistance. Finally, Vidrin will dive deeper into the topic of Somatic Partnering with a discussion featuring three panelists whose work and research are critical to Vidrin’s project: Bonnie Wong, director of the Neuropsychology Program in the Frontotemporal Disorders Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital; Mario Alberto Zambrano, Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School; and Hyperion Çaca Yvaire, the Terran Shield and Community Conservation Co-Director for the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC). This conversation will be moderated by Andrew Westover, Keith Haring Director of Education and Public Engagement.
Tickets
This program will be presented onsite in the New Museum theater. All attendees are required to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. Guest speakers may be un-masked and will be socially distanced from the audience while speaking onstage. Review the New Museum’s COVID guidelines in advance of your visit.
About the Speakers
Mario Alberto Zambrano (b. 1977, Houston, TX) is a writer, dancer, and educator who lives and works in New York City. He is the Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School in New York, NY, and the Summer Program Director at Orsolina28 in Moncalvo, Italy. Previously, he danced with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, Batsheva Dance Company, and Ballet Frankfurt. He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, a Presidential Scholar Award, a fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alice Hoffman Prize in Fiction. His debut novel, Lotería, was published in 2013. He holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a John C. Schupes Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction.
Hyperion Çaca Yvaire (b. 1989, San Diego, CA) is an Atakapa Ishak and Sea Kréyòl territorial artist-researcher, sovereign poet, and kinmaker who lives in Hartford, CT, and works across territories. He is the Terran Shield and Community Conservation Co-Director at Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC), which aims to find ways of honoring the land to build a land trust with clarity of focus, intentionality, and lived experience that centers the voices of QTBIPOC Farmers, Land Stewards, and Earth Workers. His sculptural and sonic work explores the afterlives and aftershocks of collision through investigating administrative, legislative, and wave phenomena and materializes in planetary cultures and practices of care. Yvaire has recently exhibited work at the Tufts University Art Galleries, as well as Spectacle Island and Peddocks Island in the Boston Harbor.
Ilya Vidrin (he/they, b. 1988, Boston, MA) is a performer, educator, and researcher working at the intersection of performing arts, philosophy, and interactive media. Born into a refugee family, Vidrin’s research and artistic practice interrogate the complex ethics of human interaction, including the embodiment of empathy, cultural competence, and social responsibility. He is featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2022. Vidrin has been an artist-in-residence at Jacob’s Pillow; North Atlantic Ballet; Ballet Des Moines; AREA Gallery; the National Parks Service; Harvard ArtLab; The Walnut Hill School; Interlochen Arts Academy; MIT Media Lab; Boston Center for the Arts; Le Laboratoire; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has also worked with the L.A. Contemporary Dance Company; The Royal Swedish Ballet: Berlin Staatsballett; Boston Philharmonic Orchestra; The Cambrians; Erick Hawkins Dance Company; and dance artists including Sidra Bell, Aszure Barton, Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe, Brian Brooks, and Wendy Whelan. He is a recipient of several fellowships, including Byron Fellowship in Sustainable Leadership (2015); Derek Bok Fellowship in Media, Visualization, and Literacy (2015); Erasmus Fellowship (2016); Boston Foundation “Live Arts Boston” Grant (2018/2021); and Massachusetts Cultural Council Choreographic Fellowship (2020). Vidrin holds a PhD from the Center for Dance Research, United Kingdom.
Bonnie Wong, PhD/ABPP-CNN, is the Director of the Neuropsychology Program in the Frontotemporal Disorders Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is a board-certified neuropsychologist with over 20 years of clinical experience working with adults affected by a range of neurologic conditions. She has developed and directed programs focused on maintaining brain health and slowing cognitive decline. Drawing on 25 years of training in classical piano and her interest in the Flamenco art form, she developed a music and cognition program that focuses on improving cognitive functioning and strengthening relationships between care partners and patients of families affected by dementia. She has now expanded components of this protocol to therapeutic dance programs dedicated to bringing interactive flamenco performances to assisted living and nursing care facilities in the Boston area.
Sponsors
Generous ongoing support is provided by the Charlotte and Bill Ford Artist Talks Fund.
Public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund; and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.
Support of artist participation is provided by Laura Skoler.
Additional support for education and community programs is provided by the American Chai Trust.
A full list of support for “ILYA VIDRIN: EVERYTHING YOU DO MATTERS, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO” can be viewed here.
