Residency

The Arts Institute welcomes renowned choreographer and dancer Sally Gross as the Fall 2012 Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence. Sally Gross was an original member of New York’s highly influential Judson Dance Theater, a group of artists in the early 1960s who collectively rejected the confines of modern dance practice and theory in favor of a more democratic and egalitarian process and practice. Developing out of that experimental spirit, her work is also deeply autobiographical, drawing on her experiences as the daughter of Jewish immigrants on New York’s lower East Side. Village Voice dance critic Deborah Jowitt wrote “Every moment in a work by Sally Gross appears to be immaculate, chosen with care.” New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning described Ms. Gross as “a choreographer with a sharp sense of visual effect, one who can indicate complex atmospheres and personal histories with the most minimal of brush strokes and the simplest of props.”

While in residence, Sally Gross is teaching “Interdisciplinary Improvisation,” a semester-long experiential introduction to improvisation for a diverse group of students. Students will creatively respond to and make use of the landscape, architecture, history, sound, and visual imagery of a site to create interdisciplinary movement-based work. At the end of the semester her students will present a culminating performance responding to the work of light artist Leo Villareal at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sally Gross’s residency is sponsored by the Dance Department and the Center for Jewish Studies, and cosponsored by the Art Department and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.