EM PAPINEAU AND SOFIA ENGELMAN DANCE
photo ©Derek Fowles
photo ©David Gonsier
photo ©The Fleet
photo ©Derek Fowles
INSTANT SAVIORS (just add water) (2019)
30 min
description: We hopelessly want to be each other's savior. We are in love and dependent and inseparable. We bathe in a kiddie pool of money and gold, read bedtime stories, and transport ourselves to an ephemeral dream world. We make an imagined future right now.
performances at Ponderosa, Lion's Jaw Festival's The THING, Movement Research at the Judson Church, FRESH Festival, EstroGenius Festival at Kraine Theater, HUT at School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Mark DeGarmo Dance, Smith College, Providence Movement Festival at AS220, and The Dance Complex
View the Kraine Theater iteration here.
photo ©Molly Hess
photo ©Kerry Constanino
photo ©Molly Hess
Trash Hats (2018)
22 min
description: Em leaves to buy a soda and fries. We both have trash hats and Sofia wants presents. Each performance is a new iteration assembled live and we see you see us. And we collide.
performances at Fresh Dance Friday at Green Street Studios and The Living Room's Kaleidoscope
View the promo video here.
photo ©Peter Raper
photo ©Olana Flynn
photo ©Olivia Blaisdell
photo ©Peter Raper
Preparations for Being Our Best Selves (ongoing)
Length Undetermined
description: A moniker for all one-off performances: durational installations, indeterminate improvisations, and public works in progresses. We are always trying our best and this is a space to fail and play hard—a home for firsts and lasts. Relics and remnants from these experiments sometimes find their place in other works.
performances at The Root Cellar, Northampton Center for the Arts, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Ponderosa, Smith College, Flywheel, The Dance Complex, The Craft, and Queer Spectra
photo ©Peter Raper
photo ©Peter Raper
photo ©Peter Raper
photo ©Peter Raper
INSTANT SAVIORS (how stars are made) (2020)
32 min // unfinished due to COVID-19
description: INSTANT SAVIORS continues. We liven our hearts, our eyes, our knees, the floor. We make each other real. We ascend. We sensitize ourselves and the space. Gumballs are medicine, effort is religion, and the voice is unsilenced. Abrahamic iconography emerges as we lift each other onto higher planes. This dance is for you, it is with you; it is unstable communion.
performances at School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Movement Research, The Dance Complex, and Tufts University
View an excerpt/draft here.
photo ©Jamara Sheely
photo ©Line Pelletier
photo ©Line Pelletier
photo ©Jamara Sheely
Where the air is light and clear (2017)
7 min and 35 min versions
description: We are not subtle. We are obvious in all denim. We go for a ride, following and interrupting momentum, finding space together and apart. We address you.
performances at Smith College, Boston University, Fresh Dance Friday at Green Street Studios, The Living Room, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
View the 7 min version here.