Jeanine durning biography of christopher
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Jeanine Durning
Based in NYC, Jeanine Durning’s work as a choreographer, performer and teacher is rooted in the physical body and the multiplicity of its expression and experience. She sees these aspects of her practice (making, performing and teaching) as integral to and informing each other. She has collaborated as a performer in the work of Deborah Hay, Susan Rethorst, Chris Yon, David Dorfman, Lance Gries, Bebe Miller, Martha Clarke and others.
Since 1998, Durning has been creating both solo and group performances on a project grund with a core group of collaborators. In New York, Dance Theatre kurs and Danspace Project have supported her choreographic work. She has received numerous commissions from Universities, independent performers and repertory companies to create original work.
Central to her creative interests and choreographic practice in the last few years are the overlapping ideas of memory, biography and documentary, within and through the structure of live p
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photo credit: Snorri Sturluson
Jeanine Durning is an Alpert Award winning choreographer, performer and teacher, from New York, whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having both “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.”
Since 1998, Durning has created both solo and group works, presenting nationally and internationally. Her most recent projects are centered around a procedural practice she calls nonstopping. In 2010, Durning premiered her critically acclaimed solo inging (based on a practice of nonstop speaking) in Amsterdam, and has since then been performed the work over 50 times across Europe (Stockholm, Berlin, Zagreb, Kristiansand/Norway and Leuven/Belgium), the US (NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Williams College, UMBC), in Toronto, Canada. Durning’s work has been supported and awarded by two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships in Choreography, the Alpert Award for C
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Chris Yon, Jeff Larson, and Zach Steel in conversation with Jeanine Durning
PEAR COWBOY PLANET
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Thumbnail photo by Steven Schreiber
Jeanine Durning: So, I’m doing this interview w/ Chris Yon, Jeff Larson and Zach Steel, (and Zach’s not here yet) for their performance at La Mama in April called Pear Cowboy Planet. I’m going to start with some really obvious questions, but I’m going to start with the least obvious question, I guess, from the outside perspective, but probably not from the inside perspective, and that is: Are you using any of the process of Exquisite Corpse for this piece?
Chris Yon: We did use that process a lot in coming up with the material for the cowboy section, but not so much in the assembly of all of these parts, if that makes any sense.
Jeanine: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Can you just explain and define what Exquisite Corpse is, just a really basic definition of it?
Chris: Right. So Exquisite Corpse is a w