Distinguished Professor Seminar Series: Professor Michelle Ellsworth

麻豆影院 the Event
Professor Michelle Ellsworth

Join us for an educational evening with Distinguished Professor Michelle Ellsworth,听who will share excerpts of her work and talk about some intersections between: dance, language, machine learning, and some classical Greek writers.

She will spotlight two projects of hers:

  • Post-Verbal Social Network (PVSN) employs both contemporary and pre-industrial technologies to augment the physical labor of choreography and community. In a series of PVSN prototypes, Ellsworth and friends commingle simple mechanical apparatuses as well as Javascript, Arduinos, and a Generative Adversarial Network with choreography to test possible non-language based body to body encounters.
  • Phone Homer: Clytemnestra's Guide to Surveillance-Free Living is a techno-feminist remix of the ancient epic poem, The Iliad. This so-called 鈥渨ork鈥 demonstrates how to avoid exposure to: 1) unstable 鈥渨atching鈥 and 2) insecure humans. With a completely offline internet and prerecorded replicas of her most frequent conversation, Clytemnestra demonstrates how to live free from surveillance and interpersonal drama.

麻豆影院 the Speaker

Though not a licensed scientist, technologist, pharmacist, or carpenter, Michelle Ellsworth (a middle aged white woman) nevertheless co-mingles these disciplines with dance in an attempt to choreograph coping strategies and wood-based and web-based solutions to geopolitical (and personal) phenomena. Among Ellsworth鈥檚 honors are: Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), Doris Duke Impact Award (2015), NEFA National Dance Project Grant (2017, 2014), Creative Capital Fellowship (2013), and USA Artists Knight Fellowship in Dance (2012). She has received three National Performance Network Creation Fund Commissions (2004, 2007, and 2016). Ellsworth has performed all over the world and has been teaching at CU since 1998.

Reviews:

Sean J. Patrick Carney. 鈥淒ark Eco-Comedy: Austin鈥檚 Fusebox Festival,鈥澨鼳rt In America. (May 2, 2019)
鈥淓llsworth has somehow squeezed an unreasonable amount of late capitalism鈥檚 extant anxieties into one of the most affecting performances I鈥檝e seen in years.听The Rehearsal Artist听made visible a century鈥檚 worth of social accelerants stoking the Anthropocene, all in the time it takes most of us to get to our jobs. It is鈥擨 say this with sincerity鈥攁n听important听work.鈥

Brian Siebert. 鈥淔or Michelle Ellsworth, Practice Makes 鈥 More Practice,鈥澨齌he New York Times. (Jan 2, 2018)
鈥淵et her eccentric and marvelously original art defies easy categorization.鈥

Maura Donohue. 鈥淕etting Real #1: Michelle Ellsworth鈥檚 鈥楾he Rehearsal Artist鈥 for American Realness,鈥澨鼵ultureBot. (Jan 12, 2018)听
鈥淓llsworth delivers another stunning head trip, literally, as limited audiences encounter and become part of several fleeting social science experiments.鈥

Claudia La Rocco. 鈥淣otes to Self.鈥澨鼳rtForum. (29 January 2015)
听鈥... a simultaneous belief in and skepticism toward the power of performance as cathartic social encounter.鈥


麻豆影院 the Series

The CU 麻豆影院 Retired Faculty Association (UCBRFA) presents the distinguished professors of the University of Colorado, a听lecture and presentation series featuring some of our finest professors and听their extraordinary research and scholarly work.