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master

CHRISTY ANN bROWN

Lives and works in Missoula, MT, USA

SEARCH THE ARTIST ONLINE www.hollowpalm.com/CAB/index.html

Duet for one: The ordinary miracle of pregnancy and the
universality of the transformation of the female body is explored
by choreographer Christy Ann Brown as she dances her “auto
body-graphical” story. Composer Howard Elmer’s original live
music for piano and violin accompanies this film in addition to
the in utero heart beat of the choreographer’s passenger baby.
The kinesthetic duet of mother and child creates the context for
this film which can be summarized in the following statement:
“My body knows and is teaching me the dance of birth. Everyone
was once swimming in their mother’s womb.”

Be two want I: This is an autobiographical essay in word and
gesture initiated from the point of view of a 3 centimeter tall, blue
eyed, red haired ballerina doll. From inside a child’s imagination,
the pink plastic skinned miniature converses in “dollspeak,” a
language of inversions. Christy Ann Brown performs the doll, the
girl who keeps her, and the adult woman who remembers her
Montana childhood. The plastic ballerina pops up everywhere...
from standing on birthday cakes, lying in dresser drawers and
twirling round and round when girls open their jewelry boxes
all across America. As a girl in Missoula, Christy Ann resisted,
identification with the ballerina image, declaring “No, I didn’t
tut” when dropped off at her local dance studio. She responded
with perplexity to the balletic necessity to hold her body rigidly,
while she wanted to run across native sapphired fields to exist
vitally in dreams of a wilder movement life.

Red square one: A surveillance camera and monitor is positioned
to pick up feet walking over a 5’x 5’ ft. taped red square on the
sidewalk. Beside it is a raw television monitor showing elegant
dance footage of “red square” which was performed in New York
City. In this footage, the choreographed movement is of a dancer
taping a red square on a floor and dancing in the space she has
constructed. Choreographed by Christy Ann Brown, the dance
explores the architecture of the human body in relationship to
this red square which has the dimensions of the leg length of the
dancer. A sonic sound composition by Howard Elmer is heard.
The surveillance monitor creates the immediate here and now
of everyday pedestrian movement against the formal movement
of a choreographed dance.

maIDeN tO mOtHer 
2006 DANCE, FILM, SCULPTURE, PRINT TRANSLATED INTO gALLERY INSTALLATION
DUet FOr ONe 
2006 DANCE, FILM, SCULPTURE, PRINT TRANSLATED INTO gALLERY INSTALLATION
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