Michelle Ellsworth
{{short description|American dancer and performance artist|bot=PearBOT 5}}
Michelle Ellsworth is an American dancer and performance artist, as well as a professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at University of Colorado Boulder. Her "smart, singular"{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/arts/dance/best-dance-2015.html|title=The Best Dance of 2015|last1=Macaulay|first1=Alastair|date=2015-12-09|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-06-17|last2=Kourlas|first2=Gia|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331|last3=Seibert|first3=Brian|last4=Burke|first4=Siobhan}} work spans live performance, video, performable websites, and drawing, employing absurdist humor, carpentry, technology, monologue, and dance.{{Cite web
| url = http://www.colorado.edu/theatredance/michelle-ellsworth
| title = Michelle Ellsworth
| publisher = University of Colorado-Boulder
| access-date = February 26, 2016
}} Ellsworth has received, among other awards, the Guggenheim Fellowship,{{Cite web|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/michelle-ellsworth/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation {{!}} Michelle Ellsworth|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-17}} the Doris Duke Impact Award,{{Cite web|url=http://ddpaa.org/artist/michelle-ellsworth/|title=Michelle Ellsworth {{!}} Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards|website=ddpaa.org|access-date=2016-02-26}} a Creative Capital Grant{{Cite web|url=http://creative-capital.org/grantees/view/656/project:778|title=Creative Capital - Investing in Artists who Shape the Future|website=creative-capital.org|access-date=2016-02-26}} and a United States Artists Knight Fellowship.{{Cite web|url=http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/fellows/michelle-ellsworth?rq=michelle%2520ellsworth|title=Michelle Ellsworth|website=United States Artists|access-date=2016-02-26}} ArtForum has described her work as "some of the most engrossing explorations of how the body and technology coexist and collide."{{Cite web|url=http://www.artforum.com/slant/id=54675|title=Claudia La Rocco on the fall 2015 performance season|last=Rocco|first=Claudia La|website=artforum.com|access-date=2016-02-26}}
Ellsworth has exhibited and performed at venues such as On The Boards (2004, 2005, 2012, 2015, 2019), Fusebox Festival (2013, 2015, 2019), American Realness (2015, 2018), Bard's Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (2017), Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival in Groningen, Netherlands (2016), Made in the U.S.A Festival at the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, Greece (2016), Chocolate Factory Theatre in New York, NY (2015), Brown University (2011, 2015), Abandon Normal Devices Festival in Liverpool, UK (2013), Danspace (2012), DiverseWorks in Houston, TX (1996, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009), and Dance Theatre Workshop in New York, NY (1992, 1993, 1996, 2007).
Some of Ellsworth's major works include Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome, TIFPRABAP.ORG, Phone Homer: Clytemnestra's Guide to Surveillance-Free Living, and Clytigation: State of Exception. Ellsworth has been dubbed "one of the most brilliant artists working today"{{Cite web|url=http://artsandculturetx.com/wolves-mountains-and-big-brother-tarra-nancy-dish-on-texas-stages/|title=Wolves, Mountains and Big Brother: Tarra & Nancy Dish on Texas Stages – Arts & Culture Texas|last=Gaines|first=Tarra|date=13 June 2019 |language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-17}} and an "excellent comedian,"{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/arts/dance/review-michelle-ellsworths-provocative-protocols.html|title=Review: Michelle Ellsworth's Provocative Protocols|last=Seibert|first=Brian|date=2015-11-13|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=2016-02-26|issn=0362-4331}} one who "expertly folds nervousness into her character."{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/arts/dance/michelle-ellsworth-and-jeremy-wade-at-american-realness.html|title=Michelle Ellsworth and Jeremy Wade at American Realness|last=Burke|first=Siobhan|date=2015-01-13|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=2016-02-26|issn=0362-4331}}
Honors and awards
- Doris Duke Artist Award (2019)
- New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Grant (2017)
- Guggenheim Fellowship (2016)
- Doris Duke Impact Award (2015)
- New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Grant (2014)
- Creative Capital Grant (2013)
- United States Artists (USA) Knight Fellowship in Dance (2012)
Notable works
= Evidence of Labor: State of the Kitchen =
Evidence of Labor was co-commissioned by the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic and The Chocolate Factory (NYC) in 2023. Mobilizing choreography to surface labor concerns around generative AI tools, the work brings together inquiry into machine learning and maintenance art in collaboration with programmer Satchel Spencer. "Clever contraptions and artifacts are an Ellsworth hallmark," writes Siobhan Burke in The New York Times, "and the ones she has created here, with a team of collaborators, are as smart and delightful as ever."[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/arts/dance/michelle-ellsworth-chocolate-factory.html]
= Post-Verbal Social Network (PVSN) =
Post-Verbal Social Network (PVSN) premiered at On the Boards in 2019,{{Cite web|url=https://www.ontheboards.org/special-events/post-verbal-social-network|title=Post-Verbal Social Network {{!}} On the Boards|website=www.ontheboards.org|access-date=2019-06-17}} and consists of a set of digital and analogue prototypes for embodied communication. Through choreographic gestures and a range of experiments with media such as mechanical apparatuses, JavaScript, and Arduino, Ellsworth seeks alternatives to language and to mediated interaction.
= The Rehearsal Artist =
The Rehearsal Artist, described by Art in America's Sean J Patrick Carney as "an important work",{{Cite web|url=https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/dark-eco-comedy-austins-fusebox-festival/|title=Dark Eco-Comedy: Austin's Fusebox Festival|last=Carney|first=Sean J. Patrick|date=2019-05-07|website=Art in America|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-17}} is an intimate performance in which an audience of no more than eight at one time views choreography derived from the canon of social science experiments through a one-way mirror. A giant rotating wheel is revealed, along with other surprises, drawing the audience's attention to their shifting sense of stability, and to the act of watching itself. The work premiered at We're Watching Festival at the Bard Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in 2017.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/arts/dance/michelle-ellsworth-the-rehearsal-artist-american-realness.html|title=For Michelle Ellsworth, Practice Makes … More Practice|last=Seibert|first=Brian|date=2018-01-02|work=The New York Times|access-date=2019-06-17|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}{{Cite web|url=https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/event/?eid=132369|title=Michelle Ellsworth The Rehearsal Artist at Bard College|last=College|first=Fisher Center at Bard|website=fishercenter.bard.edu|language=en|access-date=2019-06-17}}{{Cite web|url=https://contactquarterly.com/cq/article-gallery/view/michelle-ellsworth-performance-engineer#$|title=Michelle Ellsworth Performance Engineer|website=contactquarterly.com|access-date=2019-06-17}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.culturebot.org/2018/01/28016/getting-real-1-michelle-ellsworths-the-rehearsal-artist-for-american-realness/|title=Getting Real #1: Michelle Ellsworth's "The Rehearsal Artist" for American Realness|date=2018-01-12|website=Culturebot|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-17}}
= Manpant Publishing =
Manpant Publishing is a press founded by Ellsworth which uses a deliberately laborious printing process—the manual assembly of her dead father's pants into a typeface. The pants are placed, word by word, in a grassy clearing in Boulder, Colorado, while the process is recorded by and later harvested from a nearby weather camera. Manpant Publishing
=Clytigation: State of Exception=
Clytigation: State of Exception was developed as a sequel to Ellsworth's Phone Homer, picking up after the famous murder. In it, Ellsworth speculates on devices which can mask her location and identity, such as an interpersonal drone. She considers the personal and social implications of war, relating Clytemnestra's story to her own experience after 9/11.{{Cite web|url=https://creative-capital.org/2015/10/28/clytigation-by-michelle-ellsworth-blends-technology-and-greek-mythology/|title="Clytigation" by Michelle Ellsworth Blends Technology and Greek Mythology|website=Creative Capital|language=en|access-date=2019-06-17}}
=Phone Homer: Clytemnestra's Guide to Surveillance-Free Living=
Phone Homer: Clytemnestra's Guide to Surveillance-Free Living reimagines the epic poem The Iliad by investigating the dynamics of being a “first lady.” For the work, Ellsworth developed a standalone internet, pre-recorded conversations, and other tools to imagine a life that is protected from surveillance and liberated from interpersonal drama. It premiered at the Made in the USA Festival at the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, Greece in 2016.{{Cite web|url=https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/made-usa-judson-church-ringing-harlem-made-measure/made-usa-phone-homer|title=MADE IN USA {{!}} PHONE HOMER|website=Made in USA|access-date=2019-06-17}}
=Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome=
Ellsworth's performance Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome considers how to brace for a world without men. By contemplating the passing of her father, alongside a 2003 article in which New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd posited that Y chromosome has been slowly declining in importance over millennia, Ellsworth created an "artistically wild, scientifically accurate movement/theater, performance piece."{{Cite web|url=http://www.denverpost.com/ci_17523554|title=Chromosome conundrum begs her to question "Y"|last=Rinaldi|first=Ray|website=www.denverpost.com|date=2 March 2011 |publisher=The Denver Post|access-date=2016-02-26}}{{Cite web
| url = http://pica.org/event/michelle-ellsworth/
| title = Michelle Ellsworth - PICA
| website = PICA
| language = en-US
| access-date = 2016-02-26
}} The work combines recent scientific research with personal narrative and absurd gestures, and opens with the statement "I don't mean to make trouble," to which critic Nancy Wozny writes in response, "Oh, yes you do, Ms. Ellsworth!"—pointing to the rebellious and irreverent perspective that energizes this piece and Ellsworth's body of work at large.{{Cite journal
| last = Wozny
| first = Nancy
| date = October 2015
| title = Dance Renegades: Online Oddball
| journal = Dance Magazine
| volume = 89
| issue = 10
| page = 29
| issn = 0011-6009
}}
= The Objectification of Things =
The Objectification of Things is a performance which follows the life of a hamburger from birth to death and ultimately resurrection. Taking the attention away from humans and instead focusing on consumable things of the everyday, the work approaches serious issues such as climate change through the entry point of humor. The work weaves together dance, game shows, lectures, and scientific data and research.{{Cite journal|last=Osnes|first=Beth|date=October 2009|title=Performance Review: THE OBJECTIFICATION OF THINGS|journal=Theatre Journal|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|volume=61|issue=3|pages=489–490|doi=10.1353/tj.0.0206|s2cid=194013133 |issn=0192-2882|id={{ProQuest|2082051}}}}
References
External links
- [http://www.michelleellsworth.com/ Michelle Ellsworth]
- [http://tifprabap.org/ Tifprabap]
- [http://www.choreographygenerator.org/ Choreography Generator]
- [http://www.michelleellsworth.com/manpant-publishing/ Manpant Publishing]
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellsworth, Michelle}}
Category:American performance artists
Category:American women performance artists
Category:American feminist artists