Melinda Ring

Melinda Ring

Melinda Ring (born 1960 in Los Angeles) works and lives in New York. In her work, she explores a very liberal definition of choreography creating dances, performance pieces, videos and installations. In 2001 she received a MFA from Bennington College, and in 2004 founded her company, Special Projects. Her last several works have been commissioned and presented by The Kitchen, Headlands Center for the Arts, Danspace Project, The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Whitney Biennial, Mount Tremper Arts, The Box and Santa Monica Museum of Art. In 2012/2013 Ring was an artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, Gibney Dance Center (DiP), and LMCC (Swing Space). She was the artist-curator for Danspace Project’s Spring 2011 Platform, Susan Rethorst: Retro(intro)spective, and their Fall 2012 Judson Now Platform program Dance by Default. In Spring 2014 she was a critic in sculpture at Yale School of Art.

Jan 30 2020

Melinda Ring: Strange Engagements at Danspace Project

 

Thursday, January 30, 8pm
Friday, January 31, 8pm
Saturday, February 1, 8pm

Choreographer Melinda Ring returns to Danspace Project with the all-new Strange Engagements, a highly physical, exuberant, and uninhibited work made for, and in collaboration with, an extraordinary group of dancers: Laurel Atwell, Talya Epstein, Paul Hamilton, Sam Kim, and Rainey White. Constructed from the dancers’ improvisations — research in which Ring asked them to act as a conduit channeling complex shared rhythms and inner music — this work is driven from within.

The dancers plunge into private combinations, often with separate agendas, while flashes of form and pattern illuminate the deliberateness of the polyrhythmic chaos. Like Ring’s X (2010), which premiered 10 years ago at Danspace Project, Strange Engagements is deeply musical, yet danced almost completely in silence — its unheard anthem loud and driving.

“The thrill of Strange Engagements is in watching the performers navigate its considerable performative demands,” writes Ring. “What I want to say is that this dance is going to be nuts, strong and rhythmic, monstrously intricate. They are going to dance the heck out of it.”

Created by: Melinda Ring in collaboration with Performers: Laurel Atwell, Talya Epstein, Paul Hamilton, Sam Kim, and Rainey White

Jan 20 2016

Melinda Ring awarded grant from Foundation of Contemporary Arts