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2/11/2020

MANCC Welcomes Living Legacy Artist Pat Graney

Photo courtesy of thestranger.com

ATTIC

February 2 – 13, 2020

Work in Progress Showing on Wed., Feb. 12 @ 5:30pm at the Black Box Studio in Montgomery Hall.


Living Legacy artist Pat Graney will come to the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) for the first time to further her latest work, ATTIC. The work is a follow-up to Girl Gods, which won two New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards in 2016: one for Outstanding Production and one for Visual Design. Both of these works are part of a triptych, the first of which, House of Mind, was a performance/installation created in a 5,000 square foot warehouse in Seattle, WA in 2008 that then subsequently toured as a performance/installation to Diverseworks in Houston, TX in 2009 and Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI in 2011.

ATTIC explores the rape of female culture. Young girls who are raped have a change in brain chemistry that they live with for the rest of their lives. Those who have a support network and who seek therapeutic care have a better chance of regaining a semblance of health, but some young women who never come forward to speak about their assault commit suicide. The isolation and fear that accompanies sexual assault and the often-abusive relationships that follow are common, and send victims into an ever-devolving spiral from which many never recover.

In speaking to and of this issue, Graney is working with wildly off-balance movement contrasted with small, constricted physical tasks that situate themselves in a stark, disheveled environment, alongside images of the mundane and the fantastic: white cakes, dozens of white pencils, large projections of albino moose, rabbits, whales, and Arctic foxes. Through this juxtaposition, ATTIC explores sexual assault, suicide, and beatific visions of the afterlife in which the victim imagines both safety and relief.

While at MANCC, Graney will meet with two FSU Psychology Professors, Dr. Colleen Kelley and Dr. Walter Boot, to learn more about their research on aging and memory. She will also host an open work-in-progress showing followed by a discussion in the School of Dance on Wednesday, February 12 at 5:30pm in the Black Box.

ATTIC will premiere at On the Boards, Seattle, WA, from June 4 – 7, 2020.


The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), at the FSU School of Dance, is a choreographic research and development center whose mission is to raise the value of the creative process in dance.