Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for "Me, my ghost and I / Together" and "Saturday Night [on Monday!]" with Christopher Matthews on Monday, October 7, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, followed by a community improvisation jam from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM, in Class of ’56 Dance Studio Theatre (SB10), Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.
PMA Dance in partnership with the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program presents an evening with award winning choreographer, performer, and visual artist, Christopher Matthews. “If you say 'dance history, dance history, dance history' really fast, the legends will come down and into the studio to haunt you. This is my choreographic practice...to convene with these ghosts; totally gossiping! Find out who was with who! (And all the juicy details.) Then we will call upon our past queer elders to gossip some more but with criticality. Finally, we will dance to our favorite song 'all night long' when they will all disappear back to wherever queer people go to rest. That’s my choreographic process, and yes, it does sound just 'Saturday night!'”
Christopher Matthews is an award winning American-born choreographer, performer and visual artist working from London, and whose practice speaks to queerness, gender, body image, pop culture, and dance histories. He makes choreographic installations for museums, galleries and theatre spaces encouraging audiences to “experience“ dance instead of the usual practice of “watching.” To create these experiential worlds, Christopher utilizes interior design or stage crafts that bring attention and amplify their existing architectures and stories.
This event is curated by Assistant Professor of the Practice Danielle Russo and made possible through the generous support of the Department of Performing & Media Arts and the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at Cornell University. MOVING FORWARD: New Futurism in Installation, Intermedia, Interactive & Immersive Dance is a yearlong activation of brand-new, cutting-edge curriculum, curricular and extracurricular events, guest artist exchanges, symposia, and performance and live-action engagements germane in the twenty-first century field of dance and its momentous innovations.
Christopher Matthews holds a BFA in Dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Choreography from Trinity Laban. His video and performance works have been presented internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Sadler’s Wells, Art Night 2018, Yorkshire Dance, Enclave Gallery, Arbyte Gallery, ]performance space[, Chisenhale Dance Space, MonArt Digital Art, CollectArt, LimaZulu, 4BID Gallery, Mount Florida Gallery, Castlefield Gallery, Prism Contemporary, Millennium, Reykjavik Dance Festival, Cent Quatre, MCLA Gallery 51, Villa Empain, Loop Video Art Festival, and was named a 2024 Blue Chip Finalist. As a performer, Matthews currently works with Trajal Harrell. He can be seen in the upcoming Wicked film directed by John Chu, due out in November 2024 and the new Netflix film The Magic Faraway Tree starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy out in January 2025. For more information, please visit www.formedview.com.
