Megan Mayer

Megan Mayer

Megan Mayer is a choreographer, performing artist and photographer based in Minneapolis. Her dances resonate with audiences by fusing nuanced imagery gleaned from vulnerable situations with a strong sense of musicality and comic timing. By unearthing and luxuriating in anti-performance moments, traditionally undisclosed aspects of performance, in turn, become the focus. She excels at revealing and showcasing performers’ distinctive personalities and characteristics in her dances.

Mayer is a recipient of a 2010 McKnight Foundation Fellow in Choreography. Additionally, she was awarded a 2010 Jerome Foundation Travel Study Grant, affording her a choreographic mentorship and workshop with New York dance artist Douglas Dunn in Fall 2010. Her production We tried to throw the light (2010) was commissioned by The Southern Theater. I Could Not Stand Close Enough To You (2009), co-commissioned by The Walker Art Center and Southern Theater for Momentum: New Dance Works, was named 2009’s top dance event by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. Her suite of Pulp Dances (2007) was commissioned by the Minnesota History Center.

She has premiered original dances at The Southern Theater, The Walker Art Center, Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, The Soap Factory, and in the CATCH series (NYC) and in public bathrooms. She has a growing body of work of short dance films, several of which are in collaboration with film and video artist Kevin Obsatz. Her dance film Over Time (2009) was created for Skewed Visions’ online Cubicle series. She holds a B.A. in Dance from the University of Minnesota.

McKnight Foundation Partnership | Feb 12-25, 2012

Soft Fences (working title)

“Orbit, as I understand it, refers to the trajectory of an object around a moon, planet or star. However, I read another description of it as the exquisite balance between gravity and momentum. That definition intrigues me, because it made me think of people in a transitional state where one is neither arriving nor leaving.” - Megan Mayer, 2010 McKnight Fellow in Choreography.

Through a lens both personal and collective, Mayer will explore the themes of transition, displacement, and isolated experience. While in residence, she will research space travel and the psychological states of astronauts as a concrete example of displacement through extreme journey and re-entry, orbit, and the physical state of “being between gravity & momentum.” She also intends to visit the Kennedy Space Center, interview an astronaut, and utilize these experiences to generate a rich movement vocabulary with her performers / collaborators. An informal showing and dialogue will take place at the end of her residency.

As part of the residency, Mayer will work with Film and Video Artist Kevin Obsatz to create video footage that will be incorporated into the performance via projection, and with Sound Designer Elliott Durko Lynch to create an original soundscore. Additional collaborators in residence include Charles Campbell, Angharad Davies, and Greg Waletski.

This residency is supported in part by The McKnight Foundation.