Carmen Beuchat with Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta: Two not One II

Please note there is extremely limited space for both performances. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.

A foundational figure in postmodern dance, Carmen Beuchat (b. Santiago, 1941) formed her own company in Santiago before moving to New York in the late 1960s, where she participated in Trisha Brown’s company and collaborated with artists such as Juan Downey and Gordon Matta-Clark. In 1977 Beuchat returned to Chile to present her own choreography. Amidst authoritarian rule, she staged the country’s first workshop in Contact Improvisation, a technique which championed nonhierarchical values such as freedom of movement and the equality of all bodies. 

Two not One II (2016) is a dance performance by Beuchat staged in collaboration with visual artists Felipe Mujica and Johanna Unzueta (both b. Santiago, 1975). The work is a contemporary variation on Beuchat’s experimental choreography, Two not One (1975), and is the first “reconstruction” of one of Beuchat’s early works. The new choreography is based on fragmented memories and photographs of the original piece, and draws from principles of dance from the ’70s including improvisation, responsiveness, straight lines, and circular shapes that Beuchat termed “spatial corridors.” 

The live work is performed by two Chilean dancers, Carolina Escobillana and Paula Sacur, and staged amidst the installation La tierra pone en equilibrio los extremos (2016), which consists of a new series of fabric curtains by Mujica, designed and fabricated in collaboration with Unzueta, and recreations of two mobile structures that were part of the original dance piece in 1975, designed by Michael Moneagle. The various components of the work—dancers, sculptures, and fabric panels—function as temporary and fragile architecture that symbolically connects the dancers’ organic movements with the more rectilinear, Le Corbusier–designed gallery. Through Mujica and Unzueta’s installation, Two not One II consciously asserts its distance from the original work’s context, reassembling and reframing a past work for a new time, space, and public. 

This project is informed by ongoing research on Beuchat’s archive headed by Chilean dancer and dance theorist, Jennifer McColl. Organized in collaboration with David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University.

In collaboration with the Office for the Arts (OFA) Dance Program Master Class Series is a master class on Sat, Oct 29, 1-3 pm with Carmen Beuchat and Jennifer McColl Crozier, scholar and director of Carmen Beuchat project. More information here. 

Carmen Beuchat

Carmen Beuchat is a Chilean artist and choreographer born in 1941. She immigrated to the US at the end of the 60s, where she participated actively in the New York scene during the 70s and the 80s. In Chile, she is recognized as the first source of contact improvisation and composition techniques related to North American postmodern dance. She held dance workshops in the midst of the Chilean dictatorship, initiating a process of great transformation, not only in formal terms, but also in terms of a philosophy about the body in motion. In the 90s she settled back in Chile working as head of several dance schools and developing creative and educational programmes in Santiago and Valparaíso. She is currently living in Quetroleufu, South of Chile.

Felipe Mujica

Felipe Mujica born in Santiago, Chile in 1974, studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile. In 1997, he co-founded an artist-run space Galería Chilena (GCH), with Diego Fernández and José Luis Villablanca, which operated between 1999 and 2005. In early 2000 Mujica moved to New York City where he currently lives and works. He has had solo shows at Museo Experimental El Eco, México D.F., Proyectos Ultravioleta, Ciudad de Guatemala (2 person show), Galeria Nuno Centeno, Porto, Galerie Christinger De Mayo, Zürich, Die Ecke Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago and Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago. In 2016 he will participate inIncerteza viva, 32a Bienal de São Paulo. 

Johanna Unzueta

Johanna Unzueta was born 1974 in Santiago, Chile. She studied art at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and moved to New York City in early 2000, where she currently lives. She has exhibited widely through Europe, North America and South America, having solo exhibitions at Galeria Die Ecke, Santiago de Chile, Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City, Galerie Christinger De Mayo, Zürich, Queens Museum of Art, New York, Or Gallery, Vancouver B.C and Galería Chilena, Santiago de Chile. Unzueta is currently preparing solo shows for Galería Gabriela Mistral, Santiago de Chile and Jewett Art Gallery, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA (both 2016) and for Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City (June 2017).