DANCE
Meg Foley
THE UNDERGIRD (solo)
October 18-19, 2018 at Think Tank Gallery
“Time is not a wire, and we cannot follow it back to the last bead. The message was on the page, but we could not read it all. In the same way, her motions are fleeting. Time passes, and it is behind us. We are at a new motion. Her dance both generous and private.” —Thinking Dance
Meg Foley’s The undergird began as a solo about death and grief as bodily experiences, that expanded into a quintet to encompass the collective experience of loss. Now in its latest manifestation, Foley returns again to the solo form, with the residual influences of the people and processes the work has gathered across its life.
Developed using her singular improvisational practice “action is primary,” Foley’s masterful performance is crafted in the moment—painstakingly, rigorously. The undergird is a dance about mortality, birth, earth monuments and the body, alone and in congress. It asks: Where does one body end? What gets carried forward, and what remains?
Meg Foley is a Philadelphia-based performer and choreographer. Her work is influenced by her identity as a queer artist and parent and is rooted in a loving tumble with formalism in dance and what constitutes performance. She makes dances, events, and objects that explore the materiality of physical and social identity as choreographic form. From 2012-2016 she danced daily at 3:15pm, culminating in a collective documentation and performance project with three collaborators: Action is Primary. Her work has been presented in performance and visual art venues in Philadelphia, NYC, Los Angeles, Canada, Germany, and Poland. She has received grants from Dancemakers Centre for Creation, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Art Stary Browar, Polish Cultural Institute, and the Independence Foundation. She teaches at University of the Arts and is creative co-director of The Whole Shebang, an arts space in South Philly. Learn more at megfoley.org.
