© vim vigor
shannon gillen
vim vigor
—
program
track b
title
b12 mavericks performance project / process
focus
choreographic process
description
SUSPENDED
Concept:
You are falling, but you never land. I imagine a world suspended in contradiction, a scene constantly in motion, shifting characters, states, and place. Inspired by the existential absurdity and the inescapable presence of violence, SUSPENDED lives in the tension between devastation and dream, chaos and stillness, grotesque and beauty. Set against an original electronic score by Marshall Chadbourne, a figure dangles in space, caught between descent and delay, echoing a collective state of limbo. Here, we are both haunted and held, no longer asking where we are going or when we will land, instead falling over and over again, as long as the world holds.
About the Process:
I approach creation through both a physical and conceptual lens. Behavior rising into high physicality is a portal into surreal, emotional and imaginative territory. The combustible space between bodies is a dial and valve for pressure. The audience is present. Through this shared language, we’ll excavate the characters and landscapes of SUSPENDED.
Exchange, creative harmony, friction, and risk-taking are at the core of VIM’s work. I will propose movement, original writing, themes, images, scenes, and tasks; your interpretations and responses—wild, grounded, or unexpected—are equally part of the piece’s evolution. I believe in a process shaped by narrative-driven happenings colliding with flung counterpoint characters or events—a space where our disparate perceptions generate something uncanny, yet collectively known. The goal isn’t to build a linear story, but to inhabit a world together—one that drifts between war-torn realities and surreal dream-states, tethered by movement, memory, and the absurd hope that endures even when we seem to be going nowhere. Where the weight of human experience lies in its emotional truth more than its accuracy, and where time bends and collapses into childlike loops: are we there yet?
(warm up included)
biography
shannon gillen is the artistic director of vim vigor (us). her creative work has been commissioned across the usa, canada, central america, south america and europe. projects include commissions by l.a. dance project, dance.films for bam, ny fashion week, danceworks at the lobero theatre, hubbard street 2, gibney dance company, over het lj in (nl), jacob's pillow, agnes varis (nyc), arthur miller (mi), bdt at the ica in boston, ruvuelo (chile), mainfranken theater würzburg (de), arts umbrella in vancouver (ca), the international solo-tanz theater festival in stuttgart (de), tif theater in kassel (de), de dansers (nl), as a think big choreographer-in-residence at staatsoper hannover (de) and at princeton where she was a choreographer in residence; notable festivals and venues include springboard danse, new york live arts, prisma festival in panama, judson church, pulse art fair/art basel, bryant park, nyc's river to river festival, perry mansfield, and the joyce. in 2024 gillen created work for the iua in iceland, and in 2025 she will create work for the university of limerick and the iab in barcelona. gillen is an associate professor of dance at the university of michigan. she is a graduate of the juilliard school and earned her mfa from tisch school of the arts, nyu. she trained in meisner acting at maggie flanigan studio, in nyc, and with her colleague, jason cianciulli, has since adapted many of these practices into vim's methodology for movement practitioners.