Outside: Movement Scores for Urban Ecologies
Outside: Movement Scores for Urban Ecologies
Phoebe Berglund's new book Outside: Movement Scores for Urban Ecologies, published by Shandaken Projects, presents dance scores written by members of the Phoebe Berglund Dance Troupe (PBDT) from 2020 to 2022, alongside documentation of these scores being enacted.Berglund founded PBDT in August 2020, formalizing a community of dancers that had realized her choreography for museums and performance institutions since 2005. Rehearsing outside to help protect its members from Covid, the troupe forged a strong connection to the natural world.The scores collected for this book build on Berglund's Sky, Stone Sea, commissioned by the Getty Research Institute and Museum in 2021. This work, which was performed in Marsha P. Johnson Park, Brooklyn, NY, reimagines Walter de Maria's Fluxus-era score Beach Crawl. Sarah Cooper, Performance Programs Specialist at the Getty, writes in her introduction that Berglund's "unique approach of activating existing artworks with movement... explores how dance, which is traditionally envisioned in response to, and moves in concert with, music, could instead be generated by and tied to sculpture, objects, or the environment."Following the presentation of Sky, Stone, Sea, members of PBDT wrote their own scores for dance in outdoor settings, collected here for the first time. As Cooper urges: "Go and do! Accept the invitation set forth by PBDT and allow these scores-either merely read and activated through your meditation, or fully enacted and felt throughout your body-to reorient you to art, to life, and to the earth." (Google Books)