Margaret Jenkins: In this time of pandemics and deeply troubling ruptures across the globe, gathering together with artists from many countries feels more necessary than ever. Making work is about making community, and as we gather from our scattered provinces to better understand the state of things, Global Moves asks: what are the stories; what is to be done?

I began collaborating internationally in 2003, first in India, then China and Israel, spending time in each country learning to trust the stories and mysteries that the body holds as we built each work. I found the experiences deeply transformative, surrendering to all that was unfamiliar, whether the heat, traffic, architecture, or the politics of place. The questions provoked over these years of working together inspired me to bring us together, to share what has transpired in the interim and continue to learn from one another. Global Moves, through movement, music, narrative, and visual design, examines how we all navigate our streets, political conflicts, and private longings.

Global Moves also brings into full relief my work with many long-time collaborators, including poet Michael Palmer, composer Paul Dresher, and writer/performer Rinde Eckert. Since 1973, Michael Palmer and I have made dozens of works – his language and thinking provide haunting poetic landscapes that propel, provoke, and inform our work. Essential to our history has been the question: are we going somewhere other than where we have been? I have worked with Paul Dresher since 1985, and his capacity to support the hidden and multiple meanings of a work through his wide range of music compositions, along with his sensitivity to movement, have made him an invaluable collaborator. Rinde Eckert and I, since 1987, have made four duets and numerous works with the whole Company. Rinde sings and the rehearsal room becomes quiet; his narration makes the studio walls vibrate with meaning; when Rinde moves, his formidable presence invites you to move with him.

The MJDC dancer/collaborators and artistic collaborators are critical to the development of my work. Together they create the physical, gestural, narrative, and musical landscapes by layering, disrupting rhythms, and shattering expectations as well as
spatial planes. Our exchange is both silent and vocal, deeply intense while supportive – which allows the work to unfold with multiple meanings. I am grateful to all of them for their art, their humanity, and their constant generosity.
 

Paul Dresher: It is with great excitement that the Paul Dresher Ensemble continues our nearly four-decade long collaboration with Margaret Jenkins and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company during which time we have collaborated on over a dozen works, all of which except the very first, have featured the Dresher Ensemble performing the music live. For Global Moves, I’ll be composing and performing the score with my long-time collaborator Joel Davel using a mix of invented acoustic and electronic musical instruments along with the amazing vocal, musical, movement, and theatrical talents of my even-longer collaborator Rinde Eckert.  It is also a great pleasure return to the collaborative relationships with the international dance artists from India, China, and Israel that were first forged in earlier collaborations with MJDC starting in 2006. Thus, one of my musical goals in this score will be to acknowledge, integrate, and celebrate the musical cultures and sonic environments of our international collaborators.

​

Michael Palmer: You might think, after all this time, after all these travels, travails, attempts, that experience would render the process orderly, almost, so to speak, natural. Of course not. To begin, one must once again return to the beginning, to the chaos of beginnings, where thoughts and steps, sounds and words, are new, even unrecognizable. Where the voyage itself, in remembering other voyages, and imagining future ones, suggests no distinct and discrete, or final, destination. Where, like the hummingbird, one flies forward and sometimes backward in order to keep going. Where roles must be reimagined and reintegrated, purposes rethought and refined. “Meaning,” in the turbulence of the present? “Beauty,” an obsolete, even suspect, term? And yet one asserts, insists upon, company, its possibility. Overcoming. Presence, despite all. The possible, despite all. Contact.

​

Rinde Eckert: When I was four, I grabbed a little colorful ball off the shelf in some store. My mother let me keep it. She explained that the colors were all different countries, that one of them was ours. I learned the names of those countries, memorized their various colors and shapes. That little globe is gone now, and I have long since forgotten the colors. In my memory, they run together.

​

Guanglei Hui: Time flies, and within the blink of an eye we have lived with the virus for two and a half years – from panic to relief. It has been 13 years since the last time I performed with MJDC, and I'm really happy to be working together again on this world premiere work, Global Moves. This work is rooted with a strong cultural backbone, and reflects the authentic feeling of our current social phenomenon. Every time I work with MJDC, it gives me a great deal of inspiration to better understand the world from different perspectives. I look forward to returning to the big family of MJDC again – to meet and reunite with every artist!

​

Irit Amichai Gabinet: Global Moves, and its predecessor Breathing at the Boundaries, allowed me to finally reach out to the outside world. Covid restrictions and implications, as well as maternity leave, kept me at home, my little box in the world. Being able to go back to art-making, alongside the generous artists that are part of these projects, rejuvenated me and brought me great hope. We all share feelings, thoughts and experiences, which can be processed and dealt with through art. We are all alone in this together, so why won't we connect and get some new perspectives? Diminish the distances between our seemingly different worlds, between times, between places and non-places. Re-find the power of human interaction, however restricted it is.

​

Tanusree Shankar: In the current pandemic, people all over the world are going through immense difficulties, particularly so the artists. Under the circumstances, Global Moves comes as a breath of fresh air – a lifeline where we can connect, communicate and learn from others across countries. Global Moves is more relevant today where we have all devised unique methods to connect, share and bond without traveling out of our homes. This virtual connection, though unusual, inspires us to work beyond the physical shackles to create something beautiful. Working with MJDC after so many years again seems like a dream fulfilled, and to work with artists from China and Israel as well seems an extension of that fulfilled dream. This project enables us to share and learn from each other – not only our work, but also our cultures – to create a new piece.