{"id":208020,"date":"2019-07-09T17:57:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T21:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/?p=208020"},"modified":"2019-07-10T12:27:55","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T16:27:55","slug":"prestigious-dance-research-fellowships-awarded-to-montclair-state-professor-and-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/2019\/07\/09\/prestigious-dance-research-fellowships-awarded-to-montclair-state-professor-and-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Prestigious Dance Research Fellowships Awarded to Montclair State Professor and Student"},"content":{"rendered":"

Montclair State MFA student Emmanu\u00e8le Phuon and dance faculty member Apollinaire Scherr have been named 2019 New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dance Research Fellows. They were chosen from a record number of applicants from around the world, who submitted research proposals that draw on the rich collections of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. Scherr and Phuon are among the researchers whose work will help celebrate the 75th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the library\u2019s Dance Division \u2013 which is the world\u2019s largest and most comprehensive archive devoted to the documentation of dance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese highly prestigious, competitive fellowships acknowledge the quality of the University\u2019s nationally recognized dance programs,\u201d says Montclair State Dance Division Director Elizabeth McPherson. \u201cThe library has an extensive collection of dance photographs and Scherr will be focusing specifically on photographs of Martha Graham. Phuon will be focusing on Cambodian dance related to spirituality and myth, which dovetails with her MFA thesis project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2014, the fellowship program has supported researchers with a $7,500 stipend for 6-month-long projects drawing on the Dance Division\u2019s outstanding archival collections. While the program generally supports six projects, this year, it will support seven projects. Phuon was one of two fellows selected from applicants whose projects focus on the library\u2019s Khmer Dance Project Collection, which she will be using to research and reinterpret traditional Cambodian dances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditions of Sbek Thom, or shadow puppet theater, and Lakhon Khaol, classical dance also known as the theatre of monkeys, share a common inspiration in the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the Indian epic Ramayana,\u201d Phuon explains. \u201cMy project would link these two theatrical traditions together and propose a contemporary visual and choreographic approach to an ancient tale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Reamker recounts the story of the quest to rescue Seda, the wife of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, who has been abducted by the demon Reab. \u201cRama asks the monkey god Hanuman and the monkey king Sugrib to help wage war against the demons,\u201d Phuon says.<\/p>\n

For her project, she plans to choreograph \u201cKumbhakar Swallows a Dead Dog.\u201d \u201cThis episode is the pinnacle of a ritual celebrated each year at the monastery of Wat Svay Andet, near Phnom Penh, on the Cambodian New Year, which coincides with the beginning of the rainy season,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Phuon\u2019s choreographic work also figures in another 2019 project. \u00a0Her dance, \u201cKmeropedies III: Source\/Primate,\u201d is the subject of fellow Yale University Director of Dance Studies Emily Coates\u2019 project, which will examine the development of archetypal characters \u2013 such as the monkey character \u2013 that populate classical Cambodian dance narratives.<\/p>\n

Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0dance critic Scherr, who teaches a course called Performance Perspectives to Montclair State MFA students, will be comparing the iconic images captured by Barbara Morgan in her celebrated 1941 monograph,\u00a0Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs,\u00a0<\/em>with works in the library\u2019s collection of Graham photographs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the little work I\u2019ve done so far, I\u2019m struck by what a particular vision of Graham Morgan offered: there is no blur, no histrionics. The images are crisp and also very contoured and give you a sense of space in all its depth and roundness, which is key to what Graham does with the body,\u201d says Scherr.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat interested me about the photographs in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division collection by other photographers was how much more chaos they allowed,\u201d she adds. \u201cI think with Graham, precisely because she has such status, it\u2019s hard to remember how unsettling \u2013 and unsettlingly vivid \u2013 she must have been in 1940.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2019 Dance Research Fellows will present the outcomes of research they will conduct from July through December at a daylong symposium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on January 24, 2020, which will be free and open to the public. \u201cWe in the Department of Theatre and Dance look forward with great anticipation to seeing the fruits of both Scherr\u2019s and Phuon\u2019s research,\u201d says McPherson.<\/p>\nLearn more about Montclair’s MFA in Dance<\/a><\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts 2019 awards celebrate 75th anniversary of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":208021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,1,12,66],"tags":[33,52,73],"class_list":["post-208020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-news-and-announcements","category-190_theatre-dance","category-student-success","tag-awards","tag-dance","tag-fellowship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208020"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208024,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208020\/revisions\/208024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/arts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}