EM PAPINEAU + SOFIA ENGELMAN // dance and performance
Artist Statement
Our practice is rooted in queer, anti-capitalist choreographic methodologies of mess, dis/re-orientation, futurity, failure, and transparency/realness. With these queering devices, we shape unstable, intimate places and make space for effort and oddities. We create structures and systems and then deconstruct or abandon them. We engage in a practice of world making aided by campy, disruptive object partners, such as a blue kiddie pool, gold confetti, 30 gallons of gumballs, and fake paper cash.
In our studio practice, we interrogate notions of productivity. Our rehearsals can consist of resting, talking, watching videos of work we like, and nonstop moving. This container supports us in deeply listening to the needs of ourselves and the work, cultivating a queer, anti-capitalist sensibility.
We make dances that are grounded in our material;
our flesh, the air, our love, the spaces we dance and live in. Every performance--even proscenium or black box--is site-specific, collaborating with the particular architecture of the space to home, be with, and ground the work in a sense of realness. We consider space an active collaborator, shifting each iteration of a work on tour to be in conversation with the particular architecture of the site. We don’t just mean spacing shifts; this approach consists of an in depth re-working of any and all elements of a choreography to utilize, honor, and listen to that which makes the space it will occupy remarkable. Site-specificity is an act of radical listening, (land) acknowledgment, and collaboration that transcends animacy. It is a philosophy and never requires a beautiful outdoor landscape. This dedication to collaboration with the inanimate continues into our work with objects. We love serious messes and treat every object we introduce into process and performance as essential, integrated, autonomous entities.
Our queer relationship often manifests visibly in our choreographies; it presents itself not as a narrative so much as a feeling, a state of being, a world, and a logic. Our work creates and requires a particular state of togetherness through active negotiation, hopeless dependency, and acts of trust and survival. A movement vocabulary born from collaborative inquiries of “what if”--a world-making and habit-breaking strategy--combines physical impact, heroics, and care-taking. Our romantic partnership provides a foundation of trust, support, and knowing which enables us to safely meet each other on the edge.
Transparency of intent, structure, and method are honored through conversation with tech personnel, moments in-process, and a practice of “unsilencing” which mobilizes the voice and instigates communication, boundary-setting, need-stating, and other acts of verbalized care.
We are interested in humor, but not in making a joke of ourselves.
Together, we have committed to giving our dances whatever they need and want.
We place ourselves in the creative lineages of Kathleen Hermesdorf, Bebe Miller, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, Jeanine Durning, Jennifer Monson and DD Dorvillier, Fred Herko, Yvonne Rainer, and Eleo Pomare.
Read an interview:
Image Description: Em and Sofia are seen in movement at the Judson Church. Sofia is behind Em with both of her hands underneath Em’s thighs helping to lift them off the ground. Em is mid air in a seated position, with their two arms outstretched in front of themselves. Both Em and Sofia are wearing navy blue pants with white stripes running down the sides; Sofia has a purple top on and Em has a red t-shirt with a yellow and blue vest over top. They are seen on a wooden floor with a row of empty folding chairs behind them. photo © David Gonsier