Gerard & Kelly in Rochester

Gerard & Kelly Photo by Kate Warble
Gerard & Kelly
Photo by Kate Warble

Year: 2015-2016
DANCEFORCE/BESSIES RESIDENCY FUND
Artists: Gerard & Kelly
Community Partners: University of Rochester, The College at Brockport
Audience: 164
Counties: Monroe

Organized by Missy Pfohl Smith and Douglas Crimp, with the participation of Maura Keefe, Gerard & Kelly’s public-facing residency at the University of Rochester and SUNY Brockport consisted of workshops at both campuses and a lecture.

On November 12, 2015, Gerard & Kelly led two workshops of their 2011 work REUSABLE PARTS/ENDLESS LOVE, first presented by Danspace Project (New York, NY): one at the University of Rochester and another at SUNY Brockport. In these workshops open to public view, Gerard & Kelly transmitted the score for the performance to an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate and graduate students in dance and visual studies. Participants used language and movement to transform the instructions for a kiss between a man and a woman into a machine-like production of unscripted representations of intimacy. The workshops offered students a rigorous investigation of contemporary dance techniques, especially improvisation; an inquiry into how representations of gender and sexuality are reproduced and circulated; and direct experience of choreography/dance in the expanded field of installation and performance art.

On November 13, 2015, Gerard & Kelly presented the Craig Owens Memorial Lecture sponsored by the University of Rochester Graduate Program in Visual & Cultural Studies. In their performative lecture, entitled “In Time and Out of Sync,” the artists performed an excerpt of ther 2014 work TIMELINING, and discussed recent projects and their engagement with legacies of feminism and queer theory in making time-based work.

Germane to Gerard & Kelly’s artistic practice, the project featured an interdisciplinary partnership between the universities’ departments of dance and visual studies. Through the workshops and lecture, the project fused pedagogy with performance, opening educational opportunities for college students to the general public.