Home in the Dark

Overview

Light falls on sparkling entrails. Insides exposed. We were here before, no? Maybe it is the feeling of home, love, and ecstasy seeping through porous walls. The memory of touch, of holding and pushing floods over us. Our sweat merges at the same rate that the past yields to the present. How did we sustain ourselves? Shannon Murphy and collaborators share a rich 4-year history of practice. Using a biomimetic framework, they activate the digestive system creating a model for sustainability and collaboration. The dances make visible the complex labor of togetherness. Revealing all that has been found and all that has been left behind, Shannon’s maximalist approach exhibits a constantly reforming display of portraits, collage, poetry, dance, and music. Audiences are welcome to explore the installation before or after the live show (see unticketed hours) and contribute reflections or mementos to the already abundantly exposed artifacts of living at Home in the Dark.

Shannon Murphy

Shannon Murphy is a dance artist and educator who shares by creating invitations to notice our complexity, differentiation, and resilience. These practices model possible ways of being together by experiencing sensate, erotic, and imaginative explorations of one's own biology as a metaphor for collaboration and sustainability. Shannon has stewarded a group of 10 collaborators for the last 4 years. Together with Danielle Currica, Patricia Dominguez, Beau Hancock, Marisa Illingworth, Megan Quinn, William Robinson, Steve Surgalski, Michele Tantoco, and Sara Yassky, she continues to examine the multiplicitous nature of care, intimacy, and connection through the emergent performance practice, Dark Moon. This work has been shown at Penn Museum, ArcheDream Studios, Chi Movement Art Center, Maas Space, and The Painted Bride. Throughout 2021 their work together has explored writing and digital art-making through a 6 issue zine series titled "The Efforts of Moving Through Together." Shannon received her MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts in the summer of 2019. She is currently an Artist in Residence at ArcheDream Studios and is completing a certificate in Embodied Social Justice. Shannon has studied Franklin Method with Eric Franklin for over 15 years. As one of the first US/English-speaking faculty members specializes in Franklin Method for dancers. She has been awarded an Arts for Social Change Grant from the Leeway Foundation, a Rocky Award through Dance USA Philadelphia, and residencies through the Whole Shebang, New Edge and New Edge Mix, Live Arts (now FringeArts) LAB fellowship, and was a member Mascher Space Co-Op. As an adjunct Assistant Professor, she teaches at UArts, where she is the co-Curricular Head of Body Pathways, as well as Stockton University and Drexel University, where she was the Assistant Director of Drexel Dance Ensemble from 2015-2017.

Credits

Conceived and directed by Shannon Murphy, Collaboration and Performance by Danielle Currica, Patricia Dominguez, Beau Hancock, Marisa Illingworth, Shannon Murphy Megan Quinn, William Robinson, Michele Tantoco, and Sara Yassky; Live music and original composition by Steve Surgalsk, Administrative Intern: Mik Philips and Isa Mojares, Production Intern: Ella Brockway,
This work was made possible by the support of The Painted Bride Art Center