Emergent Improvisation is a unique process for understanding structures in all principles of organization applied across disciplines.
Emergent Improvisation relates the act of structuring to natural, complex systems and time-based artistic practice.
Emergent Improvisation uses research, education, and performance to understand the act of structuring in nature and art.
Susan Sgorbati has been seriously investigating improvisation as performance for twenty years. For the last five years in collaboration with scientists, she has been exploring the relationship between dance and music improvisation and complex systems. Her work has led her to three residencies at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California under the tutelage of Dr. Gerald Edelman and a dialogue with Dr. Stuart Kauffman, who was in residence at Bennington College in the fall of 2004. Sgorbati's Emergent Improvisation Project is a co-commissioning project by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with Bennington College, The Neurosciences Institute, New England Complex Systems Institute, and the National Performance Network Creation Fund. The Creation Fund is sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Altria, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). The Jerome Robbins Foundation and the Bumper Foundation are also supporting this research.
Susan Sgorbati is currently on the Dance Faculty at Bennington College, where she has been teaching since 1983. She created the improvisational ensemble, "Materia Prima" which has performed at The Improvisation Festival in New York City, Improvised and Otherwise in Brooklyn, New York, and other venues in New England. She has done residency workshops with the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts for the last several years, and is indebted to them for their support of her new work. She is also a professional mediator, who mediates cases for the Vermont Attorney General's Office, and the Vermont Human Rights Commission. She holds The Barbara and Lewis Jones Chair for Social Activism at Bennington College. In 1999, she created Quantum Leap, a program that reconnects at-risk youth to their education. She was recently awarded The 1st Annual David G. Rahr Community Service Award from The Vermont Community Foundation.
Katie Martin is a movement artist based in Vermont, working within the spheres of choreography, performance, and education. She's had the pleasure of being a guest artist-in-residence at Bennington College, teaching dance and yoga, and continues to teach widely throughout New England and New York City.
Katie received her B.A. from Bennington College with a concentration in dance and complexity studies, studying under the auspices of Terry Creach, Dana Reitz, Susan Sgorbati, Peggy Florin, Keith Thompson, Eva Karczag, Pooh Kaye, and Felice Wolfzahn. She has danced in the works of such artists as Mark Dendy Ann Carlson, Keith Thompson, Dana Reitz, Susan Rethorst, and Meg Wolfe. Her own work has been presented at the 2003 d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival (Brooklyn), as a finalist in the 2004 American College Dance Festival Gala Concert (Smith College, MA), at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church (NYC), the 2005 Improvised and Otherwise Festival (Brooklyn) with percussionist, Jake Meginsky, and at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT).
Alongside Sgorbati, Katie is currently engaged in research that investigates time-based art within the framework of natural, complex systems, out of which surfaced The Emergent Improvisation Project, a platform for research, teaching, and performance. Most recently, Katie performed at The Neurosciences Institute (La Jolla, CA), where she has been in residence the past two winters.
Jake Meginsky's work encompasses percussion, composition, dance accompaniment, and videography. Originally from Springfield, MA, he currently lives in Bennington, VT, where he is engaged in explorations involving compositional structures, music for movement, the representation of dance on video, and the performance of improvisation. His work in sound design and music for dance is fueled by the notion that music lives in the body.
For the past ten years, Jake has received training in various musical modalities under the auspices of Archie Shepp, Joe Platz, and Milford Graves. He has performed in a wide variety of venues all over the northeast, including Free 103 (Brooklyn), The Hook (Brooklyn), The Flywheel (Easthampton, MA), Mystery Train Records (Amherst, MA), Qville (Queens), Work in the Performance of Improvisation (Bennington College, VT), The Bread and Puppet Theatre (Boxer, VT), the 2005 Improvised and Otherwise Festival (Brooklyn), the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT), and The Neurosciences Institute (La Jolla, CA).
Currently, Jake teaches percussion at Bennington College, where he is pursuing an MFA. He frequently collaborates with Brooklyn-based percussionist John Truscinski in the Slaughterhouse Percussion Duo. Their recordings can be found on Open Mouth Records (Northampton, MA), Hells Half Halo (Seattle, WA), and Wooden Finger Records (Belgium).
Cori Olinghouse is originally from San Diego, California. She received a B.A. from Bennington College with a concentration in dance, film, and writing. A member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company since 2002, she performs and teaches with the company internationally. Recently, she assisted in the restaging of Set and Reset/Reset for the eDGE Dance Company at the London Contemporary Dance School and worked with Trisha Brown on the making of O Zlozony / O Composite for the Paris Opera Ballet. Olinghouse's approach the dance is influenced by her study of the Alexander Technique and by her investigation of improvisational forms. Olinghouse has had an ongoing duet history in improvisation with Susan Sgorbati, and currently performs their duet, Binaries: Triumphs of Two in New York City and New England. Olinghouse is also a film and video archivist for choreographer Cathy Weis and curator Jon Gartenberg of Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc.
