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Brendan Drake
Improvisation
Biography:
Brendan Drake (all pronouns) is a gender-queer interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn/ Lenapehoking. Their work uses disparate movement forms, erotic imagery, text, and sound manipulation to interrogate issues surrounding gender, vanity, and queer power dynamics. Brendan was a 2017-2018 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts and has been awarded grants and residencies through the Brooklyn Arts Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CUNY Dance Initiative, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, The Tank, and Chez Bushwick. Their recent work has been presented at Danspace Project (Draftwork), Movement Research, The Brick, La MaMa, PAGEANT, Joes Pub, The Wild Project, AUNTS, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, JrHigh (Los Angeles, CA), Fowler Museum (Los Angeles, CA) and The Dance Complex (Boston, MA). In addition to their work for the stage, Brendan choreographed the fall 2014 “Equality = Love'' campaign for Adidas Originals/Pharrell Williams. They served as the movement coordinator for editorial shoots with Vogue, Porter, V, and Elle Magazines (photographers: Liz Collins, Ryan McGinley, Collier Schorr). From 2022-2023, they were the director of UCLA’s “Sex Squad,” working collaboratively with undergraduates and LA County High School students to devise performances centering on issues of sexual health, consent, identity, and pleasure. In May 2023, they presented their graduate research on tracking queer sociality in contemporary dance and performance at the UCLA National Queer Graduate Conference. They have also recently guest taught at Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts, Muhlenberg College, Skewl, SCDT, and the New York Film Academy. Brendan holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MFA in Choreographic Inquiry from UCLA.Class Description:
This workshop is guided by my ongoing creative interest in using choreography to explore and question present notions of queer sociality and power dynamics. We will work with a few super rad exercises passed down over the years by some good Judies (Clare Croft, Miguel Gutierrez, and Julie Tolentino to name a few). We will also employ some of the movement scores I’ve been tinkering with while working on my ongoing performance project "Ghost Porn." The goal is to have fun, get messy, build community, and co-create a working environment that invites both provocation and pleasure.