“This is how modern dance should be: beautiful and edgy all at once.”
Rebeca Martin, Dance Informa
Pauline Jennings is a contemporary choreographer compelled to create works for stage, video, hybrid photography, and interactive installation that attempt to viscerally capture the excitement, confusion and fear accompanying our rapidly changing society. In her often collaborative work, it is important that both the performers and audience partake in a journey together – neither party quite knowing all of the details at the start of a performance, but discovering them together along the way. Developing emergent forms, responsive systems, and modes of audience interactivity has enabled her to choreograph in this manner. Emergent work further demonstrates and attempts to viscerally capture the excitement, confusion and fear that accompany our rapidly changing society. Through her work, Pauline hopes that viewers will have an opportunity to reflect upon and take a more active role in determining their own evolution.
Jennings’ choreography for stage and interactive installation have been performed in festivals and showcases nationwide, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Merce Cunningham Studio (New York City), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Troy), Museumsquartier Wien (Vienna), Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC), Burlington City Arts (Burlington, VT), Institut Intermédií (Prague), Eastern Bloc (Montreal), Primo Piano LivinGallery (Lecce), Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition (Shenzhen), ISEA2014 (Dubai) and Takt Kunstprojektraum (Berlin).
Currently, Jennings is developing the Random Site Series. Through a hybrid art form, movement poetry, the RSS experiments with photography and site-specific movement to prompt the question: How does one year feel? Through personal reflection and a fierce dive into familiar landscapes including self, home, and surrounding geography, Jennings challenges herself and viewers alike to consider pursuing adventure, practicing curiosity, and making discoveries within the seemingly mundane.
In May 2019, Pauline collaborated with visual artist Heather Theresa Clark on the project neighboring|towns, an immersive four-channel video and sound installation about borders, restriction of movement, and family/community life. The project focuses on the unique border community of Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec where families affected by the US travel ban are reuniting. “neighboring|towns” premiered at the Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington DC, May 18-June 22, 2019.
Jennings also conducted a month long artist in residency program at Lake Studios Berlin (June 3-30, 2019, Germany), where she collaborated with Joshua Lacourse on two projects: 13 Minutes of Nothing (Give or Take) and Eins, Zwei, Funf und Sechs. The latter was a full evening, audience interactive duet that offered a reprieve from the stressful daily grind. The work invited strangers of all ages to cooperate and take turns rolling four over-sized dice in an energetic act of co-creation. Jennings and Lacourse are currently developing a new work Two Chairs, an immersive movement duet seeking to spark the fire of connection and blaze the trail of shared humanity between pairs of sentient beings.
In 2018, Jennings completed a major exhibition of work Becoming Human at Burlington City Arts with support from BCA’s Project VT and the Vermont Performance Lab’s SEED Award. The exhibit, (Oct. 19, 2018 – Feb 9, 2019), included a 3-channel video and sound work, “The Air Connects Us,” a full-evening intermedia performance, “Sea Inside Our Skin,” a 2-hour city-wide community engagement and interactive performance adventure (co-presented by UVM’s EcoCultureLab), and a movement workshop, artist Q&A and additional educational outreach components. Earlier in 2018, Pauline created work for the Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition (Shenzhen, China) and at the Maker Festival Shanghai (Red Light, Green Light).
Previously, Jennings was commissioned by Heidi Boisvert to create a fully emergent, three-game level work, radical [signs of life] that premiered at the Emergent Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). [radical] signs of life was “one of the first large-scale game-based experiences to use wearable biotechnology to integrate networked bodies and interactive dance. Through responsive dance, the work attempted to externalize the mind’s non-hierarchical distribution of thought and its relationship to other biomimetic structuring principles,” according to director Heidi Boisvert. [radical] served as a springboard for creating additional fully emergent and responsive works for stage. In Encrypted Trajectory, five dancers navigated a framework of rule-based systems in a shared mission of discovery and survival. Throughout their very real struggle, dancers tested societal structures of leadership and rebellion through fleeting coalitions. Pauline also presented an interactive installation and served on a panel, Interactive Technologies & Movement, at 20th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she had the honor of discussing similar responsive systems in performance.
Now based in Jericho, VT, Jennings teaches dance and Performance, Art and Social Justice at Saint Michael’s College. She was previously a Visiting Artist for the Mills College Dance Department’s Repertory Dance Company and has also lectured and taught master classes at the University of Applied Arts (Vienna), Zayed University (Dubai), NYU-Shanghai, University of California at Berkeley, Arizona State University, Amherst College, Dartmouth College, University of Maine, College of Santa Fe, and University of New Mexico. Jennings holds an MFA in Dance Choreography and Performance from Mills College.