Bluefire Sleepwalking, from New York-based dance artist Julie Mayo, probes the “graphic” in choreographic and situates itself in the attentive self-possessions of its performers: Justin Cabrillos, Ursula Eagly, Mia Martelli, Mayo, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, and Teddy Tedholm. Made of overlapping pieces which at times give way to singular worldings, Bluefire’s actions, images and personas are tangled together in a delicate network of dreamlike connection. Through irregular and wandering structures, the performers appear and disappear and are the foundation for relational possibilities of inexactitude within specificity. Bluefire continues Mayo’s practice of dance as embodied paradox and play with destabilizing content. Music by Winston Cook-Wilson and Lighting Design by Ben Demarest.
Mayo makes works that foreground performing as content and resist easy description of lived experience. Her most recent, Nerve Show, premiered in September 2021 and was a NYTimes Critic’s Pick. In New York City her work has been presented by Target Margin Theater, The Chocolate Factory, The Kitchen (DaP), Movement Research at the Judson Church, Gibney Dance, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, JACK, New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks) and Dixon Place. She has also shared her work in her hometown Richmond, Virginia, as well as Seattle, Columbus, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Mayo was a 2020-2021 Dance in Process (DiP) resident artist at Gibney Dance, a 2017-2018 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2014-2015 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks artist. She is the recipient of previous residencies at UCross Foundation, Djerassi, Yaddo, Mount Tremper Arts, Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Mayo is a facilitator/ teacher of creative and somatic practice, currently teaching through Movement Research and on her own platforms.
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