Madeline Hollander

Last updated
Madeline Hollander
Born
Education Barnard College of Columbia University, Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
Website www.madelinehollander.com

Madeline Hollander is an American artist, choreographer, and dancer, living and working in New York City. [1] Her work explores the evolution of human body movement and the intersection between choreography and visual art. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Madeline Hollander was born in 1986 in Los Angeles, California. She trained with Yvonne Mounsey while growing up in Los Angeles, [3] and she danced professionally with the Los Angeles Ballet and with Angel Corella's Barcelona Ballet. [4] She received a Bachelor's Associates degree from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2008 and attended the MFA program at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts from 2016 to 2019. [5]

Artistic practice

Madeline Hollander's work investigates the body's ability to communicate and respond within the limits of everyday systems. Since 2013, Hollander has been adding to Gesture Archive, a longitudinal research project surveying expressive human movement in all its variety. [4] She uses performance and dance to communicate how the space in contemporary art can be experienced rather than the space being simply a reaction to the art object. [2] These dances and performances build on the ballets Hollander danced growing up. The movements often reflect her observations of gesture and emulate the everyday. Benjamin Millepied, the artistic director of L.A. Dance Project and a former New York City Ballet principal, said "there's a clear understanding of classical craft when it comes to the architecture of her dances." [3] Hollander's fascination with systems goes beyond repeating existing systems. She constructs systems of her own that involve placing the body in conversation with various contexts, such as molecular or mechanical arrangements.

As well as creating choreography, Hollander has developed an intuitive and organic system of color codes and pictographs to recall her movements. She has stated that, "The drawings are only meant to be understood by me and the dancers. It's a system for recall. To remind the bodies who already lived through the movements." [6] As well as creating an extensive body of her own work, Hollander collaborates as a choreographer with other artists. [7] She made her debut in Hollywood, as a movement consultant and choreographer for Jordan Peele's "Us". In addition, she has helped develop physical vocabularies for the characters' 'dueling' selves. [3] Hollander participated in Helsinki Contemporary's, "Future Delay", a show curated by New York-based Amanda Schmitt, where she, Pearla Pigao, and Hans Rosenström were commissioned to explore the future potential of technological immortality. [8] Hollander consistently seeks inspiration by drawing her choreography's vocabulary from varied sources such as the interaction of interface design (Illegal Motion, 2015); [9] sports referee gestures (Mile, 2016); [10] and building evacuation procedures (Drill, 2016). [11]

Heads/Tails

Hollander's work "Heads/Tails" is her first major exhibition without human actors. The installation consists of hundreds of used automobile headlights and taillights, covering opposite walls of the gallery, synched with the traffic signal at the nearby intersection of Walker Street and Broadway. [12]

Cars driving along Walker Street trigger the installation's taillights when they break, resulting in their illumination. These effects are modeled after the behaviors of various New York City drivers. The lights of the installation turn off when the street light changes to green. At sunset the headlights in the installation change to a "brights" setting and at sunrise they revert to a "fog light" setting in a perpetual cycle.

Alongside the installation of car lights, Hollander exhibits a series of watercolors that mirror the pictographs she uses to help her and her dancers recall their movements. A text by A.E. Benenson addressing the history of New York City traffic and its regulation of movement vis-a-vis concepts of progress, performance and order accompanies the exhibition. It is presented alongside a small bronze statue of Mercury, one of the 104 that adorned the tops of traffic lights along Fifth Avenue from 1931 to 1964, and have since largely gone missing. [12]

New Max

As with all Hollander's work to date, the dancers' choreography references or "cites" everyday physical activities. The project notes for "New Max" describe the installation as, "Performance begins at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and dancers continuously hit a new maximum temperature each round." [13]

The starting temperature in the room is 65 degrees Fahrenheit as this is the museum standard for storing works of art. The choreography is a series of scripted movements that create body heat, raising the room's temperature to 85 degrees. This change in room temperature takes place over a series of sixteen rounds. Each round with a new min and max temp and the goal of Round 1 is to get to 70 degrees, triggering the air conditioning units to turn on and cool the room. This begins round two at a starting temperature of 66 degrees. As this pattern continues, two Dancers track their progress by the room's lights that are attached to a temperature sensor and become brighter as the room heats up. When the temperature reaches the maximum, the lights turn off, the air conditioning units turn on, and the dancers rest. Once the minimum temperature is reached again, the dancers are back in motion. [4]

Performances and choreography

Grants, residencies and awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agnes de Mille</span> American dancer and choreographer (1905–1993)

Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Forsythe (choreographer)</span> American dancer and choreographer

William Forsythe is an American dancer and choreographer formerly resident in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and now based in Vermont. He is known for his work with the Ballet Frankfurt (1984–2004) and The Forsythe Company (2005–2015). Recognized for the integration of ballet and visual arts, which displayed both abstraction and forceful theatricality, his vision of choreography as an organizational practice has inspired him to produce numerous installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation, incorporating the spoken word and experimental music.

The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Kidd</span> American choreographer

Michael Kidd was an American film and stage choreographer, dancer and actor, whose career spanned five decades, and who staged some of the leading Broadway and film musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Kidd, strongly influenced by Charlie Chaplin and Léonide Massine, was an innovator in what came to be known as the "integrated musical", in which dance movements are integral to the plot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Stroman</span> American theatre director

Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Crazy for You, Contact, The Producers, The Frogs, The Scottsboro Boys, Bullets Over Broadway, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, and New York, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shen Wei</span> Chinese-born American choreographer

Shen Wei is a Chinese-American choreographer, painter, and director who resides in New York City. Widely recognized for his defining vision of an intercultural and interdisciplinary mode of movement-based performance, Shen Wei creates original works that employ an assortment of media elements, including dance, painting, sound, sculpture, theater and video. Frequently, critics have commented on his innovative blend of Asian and Western sensibilities, as well as his syncretic approach to performance art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Cole (choreographer)</span> American choreographer

Jack Cole was an American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director known as "the Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance" for his role in codifying African-American jazz dance styles, as influenced by the dance traditions of other cultures, for Broadway and Hollywood. Asked to describe his style he described it as "urban folk dance".

Moses Pendleton is a choreographer, dancer and the artistic director of MOMIX. MOMIX is a dance company that he formed in 1981 as an offshoot of the Pilobolus, which he had co-founded while a senior at Dartmouth College in 1971. He remained a full-time member with the company until 1980. He choreographs dance sculptures that bring together acrobatics, gymnastics, mime, props, and film.

<i>Episodes</i> (ballet) Ballet by Martha Graham and George Balanchine

Episodes is a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham and George Balanchine, to compositions by Anton Webern. The ballet was a co-production between the Martha Graham Dance Company and Balanchine's New York City Ballet (NYCB). Though it was conceived to be a collaboration between Graham and Balanchine, leading choreographers in modern dance and neoclassical ballet respectively, they ultimately worked separately on the ballet's two halves. Episodes I was choreographed by Graham, for dancers from her company and four NYCB members, and depicts Mary, Queen of Scots remembering the events in her life before her execution. Episodes II, by Balanchine, is completely plotless, and made for members of the NYCB and Graham dancer Paul Taylor, who originated a solo. The ballet uses all seven orchestral compositions by Webern.

Urs Fischer is a Swiss-born contemporary visual artist living in New York City and Los Angeles. Fischer’s practice includes sculpture, installation, photography, and digitally-mediated images.

Laura Dean is an American dancer, choreographer and composer. She is known for her collaborations with Steve Reich, a number of commissioned works for the Joffrey Ballet, and works for her own dance companies. Dean's earliest works were marked by a minimalist approach and an affinity for spinning; her later work saw more use of traditional dance methods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Dunn (choreographer)</span> American choreographer

Douglas Dunn is an American dancer and choreographer based in New York City.

Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into intricate choreography. Through her use of patterns, repetition, dialect, and technology, she has created a unique style of choreography that embraces experimentation and transdisciplinarity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Taylor (choreographer)</span> American choreographer (1930–2018)

Paul Belville Taylor Jr. was an American dancer and choreographer. He was one of the last living members of the third generation of America's modern dance artists. He founded the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1954 in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniela Malusardi</span>

Daniela Malusardi is an Italian choreographer, teacher and dancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal Pite</span> Canadian choreographer and dancer (born 1970)

Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer and dancer. She began her professional dance career in 1988 at Ballet BC, and in 1996 she joined Ballett Frankfurt under the tutelage of William Forsythe. After leaving Ballett Frankfurt she became the resident choreographer of Montreal company Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal from 2001 to 2004. She then returned to Vancouver where she focused on choreographing while continuing to dance in her own pieces until 2010. In 2002 she formed her own company called Kidd Pivot, which produced her original works Uncollected Work (2003), Double Story (2004), Lost Action (2006), Dark Matters (2009), The You Show (2010), The Tempest Replica (2011), Betroffenheit (2015), and Revisor (2019) to date. Throughout her career she has been commissioned by many international dance companies to create new pieces, including The Second Person (2007) for Netherlands Dans Theater and Emergence (2009) for the National Ballet of Canada, the latter of which was awarded four Dora Mavor Moore Awards.

Sharon Kinney is an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and videographer. She was an original member of the Paul Taylor Dance Company and has worked with other notable artists such as Dan Wagoner, Yuriko, and Twyla Tharp. She is noted for creating dance for stage and film, and for exploring dance for the camera. She was awarded the 2009 Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching to honor her outstanding contributions as a teacher to "shape and preserve dance across generations."

Emery LeCrone is an American dancer and choreographer. Currently she dances professionally with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She is an established choreographer who has presented and produced numerous large scale productions with her own chamber company, Emery LeCrone DANCE, founded in 2013. LeCrone's choreography has been commissioned by the Colorado Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, Minnesota Dance Theater, North Carolina Dance Theater, and the Saint Louis Ballet, among others.

Justine A. Chambers is a dancer, choreographer and artist currently living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia. Interested in social choreographies of the everyday, she engages dance in site-specific, experimental and collaborative creation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milena Sidorova</span> Choreographer and former ballet dancer

Milena Sidorova is a Ukrainian-Dutch choreographer, mostly known for her choreography The Spider and a role as human spider in the Oscar-winning science fiction film Dune (2021). She is a former ballet dancer and currently creates choreographies as a Young Creative Associate with the Dutch National Ballet.

References

  1. "Studio Visit: Madeline Hollander by Mikkel Rosengaard - BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org.
  2. 1 2 3 "Madeline Hollander". The Fountainhead.
  3. 1 2 3 Burke, Siobhan (17 September 2019). "At the Whitney Biennial, Flood Preparation as Social Dance". New York Times.
  4. 1 2 3 "Madeline Hollander". The Artist's Institute.
  5. "CV/Contact". Madeline Hollander.
  6. Rosengaard, Mikkal (21 September 2018). "Studio Visit: Madeline Hollander by Mikkel Rosengaard". BOMB Magazine.
  7. Greenberger, Alex (26 March 2019). "A Dance for Two: Artist Madeline Hollander on Working with Jordan Peele to Choreograph His Film 'Us'". ARTnews.
  8. Jeffreys, Tom (10 August 2019). "Are We Choreographing Machines, Or Are They Choreographing Us?". Frieze.
  9. "Illegal Motion". Madeline Hollander.
  10. "Mile". Madeline Hollander.
  11. "Drill". Madeline Hollander.
  12. 1 2 "BORTOLAMI-Madeline Hollander-Heads/Tails Press Release" (PDF). Bortolami Gallery.
  13. Schwendener, Martha (1 March 2018). "What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week". New York Times.
  14. "Madeline Hollander Edition". JOAN.
  15. "Futurevisions". Torrance Shipman.
  16. "Elizabeth Jaeger - Exhibitions - Jack Hanley Gallery". www.jackhanley.com.
  17. 1 2 "Madeline Hollander (A '15)". Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.
  18. "In Practice: Under Foundations". www.sculpture-center.org.
  19. "Artist Madeline Hollander Sees Choreography All Around Us". Cultured Magazine. 12 December 2017.
  20. "Who is choreographing whom?". Gagosian Quarterly. 7 September 2018.
  21. "Madeline Hollander". The Artists Institute.
  22. "Urs Fischer: PLAY with choreography by Madeline Hollander, West 21st Street, New York, September 6–October 13, 2018". Gagosian. 17 August 2018.
  23. Bradley, Laura. "How Men in Black, Get Out, and Meryl Streep Inspired Us's Climactic Fight". HWD.
  24. "Whitney Museum Announces 2019 Biennial Participants, But One Artist Withdraws". Hyperallergic. 2019-02-26. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
  25. Palop, Benoit (22 September 2015). "Dance Meets Cutting Edge Digital Creativity at an LA Workshop". Creators.
  26. "Madeline Hollander". Socrates Sculpture Park. 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2019.