Studio Stories: CANDY BOX Dance Festival Special with Megan Mayer - Season 10, Episode 129

Megan Mayer
I am an award-winning Minneapolis-based artist working with
choreography, dance, experimental video and photography. My work
pulls from minimalism, transposition, mimicry, grief, tenderness,
wry humor, loneliness, social anxiety, fake bad timing and
exacting musicality. By exposing tiny emotional undercurrents, I
find virtuosity through vulnerability and gesture. Drawn to the
edges of the experience of performing: the anticipatory rapid
heartbeat before going onstage, and the regretful relief after
exiting, my work often reveals where that switch lives in the
body. I make deeply personal dances that celebrate the people
performing them.


For 35+ years I've always held a full-time job in addition to
being an artist. My job and dancemaking are so intertwined that I
can't consider one without the demands of the other. I make art
work amidst the inequities and confines of late-stage capitalism
and try to use my privilege to advocate for fellow artists and
employees.


 


My work has been generously supported by two McKnight Foundation
Choreographic Fellowships, residencies at the National Center for
Choreography (Ohio), Maggie Allesee National Center for
Choreography (Florida) and several local arts organizations,
grants from MRAC, MSAB and Jerome Foundation, a Sage Dance Award
and numerous choreographic commissions. www.meganmayer.com