from nyc

Hello all! My name is Biba Bell. I'm a performer, dance-maker and scholar exploring encounters between the body/movement with space/architecture as multifarious processes of dance, presence, and embodiment. I am curious about the generative qualities that occur in the midst of this interaction; how distinct modalities (dance, architecture) may be recognized as plastic, flexible and enduring; how a body might be thought as the mobility of space, or space occupied by and thus contingent upon a dancing body. Tracing various paths of logic housed in a structure (pathway, memory, facility, scale, surface, perception) I consider events wherein respective rationales deviate or shift as dances, or experiences verging on the conversation between body and site. I just returned from an improvisation & performance lab in Marfa TX which has prompted me to consider the Chinati Foundation’s project through sculpture, installation, architecture and landscape as potential proponents whose intersections open up new trajectories and questions when thought along side dance and performance. As both a scholar and artist I work to expand upon the notion of venue to become one of site, spatial sensitivity and the particular architecture of place, consider social, historical, political dimensions of the body and self in space and locate their subsequent intersections with the present creative, artistic endeavor. I make work under the moniker Urisov, a collaborative and multidisciplinary performance endeavor. I'm also involved with an annual dance touring project Modern Garage Movement (MGM) and lead workshops making site-specific dance (dancing Body/Site). I am a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at NYU. (www.urisov.com) (www.bibayoga.org)