HOMMAGE TO JUDSON DANCE
Elliot Mercer with Márcio Pereira & friends 
USA / PT
DANCE/PERFORMANCE

Between July 12th and August 22nd
Arraiolos, Évora, Fundão, Sines, Viana do Alentejo 

More info on schedules and sites of performance:
info@escritanapaisagem.net
+351 266 704 236

All ages

In October 2009 I began researching and reinventing performance events and dance constructions from the 1960s and ‘70s. Staged in outdoor locations, these pieces explore alternative conceptions of both public and private landscapes. In doing so they challenge viewers to question their relationship to outdoor space and reconsider how they choose to interact with other people in such environments. The collection of performance works selected for this project represents a diverse range of American artists from varied backgrounds, many of whom are not considered choreographers or dance artists. However, I have chosen to refer to each of these pieces as “dances” based on their focus on interventionist movement that highlight, interrupt, upset, and question stagnated and sedimented notions of place, space, and social choreography.

The reinvention process for each of these performances begins with a close study of the artist’s own documentation of their work in the form of published scores, personal notebooks, archival photographs, artist statements, performance videos, and/or recorded interviews. Using these documents as a choreographic framework, I set out to explore the ideas and ideals of their pieces.  To describe this practice I have chosen to adopt the term “reinvention” from Helen Molesworth, who describes reinvention as “a way of thinking about time and history. A reinvention is not objective; it is a call for interpretation. A reinvention is a question about what ideas from the past might mean in the present, and it wants those ideas to be useful, helpful, maybe even critical.”

To date, this project has explored and played with the work of Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Laura Dean, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Allan Kaprow, Bruce Nauman, and Yoko Ono.

Elliot Mercer


Elliot Mercer was born in California, USA. He defines himself as a choreographer- and dancer-archivist. His pratical and teoretical research centers on the possibilities of re:creating and re:actualize experimental performance and dance pieces from the 1960's and 70's - a research about the possibilities of bringing the past into the present, archiving it in the bodies that perform it. This was precisely the theme of his final project at the Department of Performance Studies (Tisch School of the Arts / New York University), from which he got his MA on May 2010.