The Moving Architects Celebrates 10th Anniversary Season

The Moving Architects (TMA) is pleased to announce the celebration of their 10th Anniversary Season with a dynamic lineup of performances, collaborations, and new initiatives in 2016-2017. Founded in 2007 in Chicago by Artistic Director Erin Carlisle Norton, TMA is currently based in NJ/NYC and has a dynamic history of teaching, performing, and touring regionally, nationally, and internationally.

TMA is a female-centric Dance Company known for creating and performing dance works that combine charged movement and feminine strength to channel the authentic complexity of both the current and historically lived female experience. The resulting dance works reveal intense female performances that make connections between bodies in motion, location and space, as well as historical and physical experience.

Alongside performances in NYC, NJ, and Boston, TMA's 10th Anniversary Season includes the continuation of the company's dance interview podcast "Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast" which interviews various 'shapers' of the dance field, and the launching of a new community outreach movement program in 2017 led by director Norton. TMA also continues their 3rd season as Gallery Artists with Pentacle, a national arts Service Management and booking organization, which provides the company various support and features the company in showcases.

2016-2017 SEASON

TMA began their 10th Anniversary Season with an annual Creative Residency at Wilson College (PA), followed by a choreographic residency and performance at Nimbus Dance Works (NJ), Featured Guest Artist in the Your Move Dance Festival (NJ), and performances with Pentacle at Dixon Place (NYC). The season continues in 2017 with performances at APAP (NYC) and The Dance Complex (Boston) with Pentacle, and the highlight of the season, "Anthology", presented by Jersey City Theater Center (NJ) and The Tank (NYC). Works performed this season showcase signatures of Norton's choreographic style - a physically strong and aggressive movement vocabulary alongside intense female performances.

Featured Work This Season:

In celebration of their 10th Anniversary Season, The Moving Architects presents "Anthology", an evening of women-centric dance works choreographed by Artistic Director Erin Carlisle Norton being presented at both Jersey City Theater Center (Jersey City) and The Tank (NYC). The compelling array of work reveals the company's signature style of indefatigable feminine strength and precision-dependent choreography, with compelling and authentic performances by Caitlin Bailey, Maggie Beutner, Jenny Gram, Léla Groom, and Ashley Peters, with projections by multi-disciplinary artist gwen charles.

Works in "Anthology" include:

"The Groove" is a quartet that abruptly overturns and surges within a buzzing sound score. Volatile and groping with physical tension and angular movement, the foursome becomes a trusting yet aggressive community trying to connect. With the performers donning 70's styled flared dresses, the dance suggests a cyclicality that is both transformative and acknowledged, as the four women shift, interrupt, and override in an out of habitual and unifying formations.

"10" is a new solo choreographed and performed by Director Erin Carlisle Norton that utilizes a sound score of her own recorded voice to narrate and share experiences of running a Dance Company for ten years. Humorous while reflective and sincere, the work utilizes only movement and phrasing material found in the company's body of choreographed works and movement practices. 

"The Jam" is a quartet with a mod flair, exacting attitude, and 60's surf and rock soundtrack. Organized into 4 sections, the dance work suggests the extremes of a turbulent era side by side with a pop culture that promoted mirth and oblivion, articulated through a punctuated movement vocabulary that embraces and rejects these states with an underlying tone of seriously rocking out.

"Americana" adds to TMA's rich history and Norton's focus of embodying past and distant spaces in the heightened present of live performance. "Americana" looks to the iconic images and interpersonal struggles of the migrating American family during the Great Depression era. Through exactingly rhythmic movement, tornadoes of meaningful interaction, and heartfelt gentleness, this women-centric work exemplifies the expansiveness of the Midwest prairies, fragility of the weathered spirit, and grit needed to survive rough times. Includes video projection by gwen charles.