Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Emma Rose Brown, 2022/ Conducted remotely by Cassie Mey on February 23, 2022; Producer: Dance Oral History Project

Author

Brown, Emma Rose

Publication

2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Mey, Cassie

Description

1 streaming video file (approximately 57 minutes) : sound, color. +

Summary

Streaming file, February 23, 2022 (approximately 57 minutes). Cassie Mey introduces herself and Emma Rose Brown including how they know each other; Brown introduces herself including the fact that she wrote the questions for the COVID-19 Dance Workers Narratives Project; she speaks about her dance background including ballet classes from age 12; her dancing and choreographing while at Smith College; after graduation from Smith College moving to New York City in the fall of 2014 in order to pursue a career in dance; after making the decision to focus more on creating her own work, finding choreographic opportunities including Fresh Tracks at New York Live Arts in 2019, Gibney Work Up, and Movement Research at Judson Church, and Sundays on Broadway; where and when she first became aware of COVID-19 including how she and some of her peers responded at the time; how awareness of COVID-19 affected the rehearsals for her Gibney Work Up piece (performance of which was ultimately canceled); her reluctance to participate in dance virtually and realizing just how much she valued the social, up close, and personal aspects of dance; her continuing to improvise at home and otherwise trying to do things that she had been doing before the pandemic; during the first few months of the pandemic having the luxury of being able to focus on her work for the Library [The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts] and the Oral History Summer School; the origins of the COVID-19 Dance Workers Narratives Project including her decision around July 2020 to take the lead on this project; getting the project underway including her conducting of a test interview; her reasons for adopting a peer-to-peer approach for the interviews; how the social justice movements of 2020 such as the Black Lives Matter movement and her regular participation in protests affected and continue to affect her; how the pandemic has changed her relation to dance including her decision to identify as an artist rather than as a dance artist; her current project of restaging (with revisions) the [Gibney Work Up] show that was canceled two years ago; her recent enrollment in a graduate program of Integrated Media Arts as part of her transition from dance artist to artist; her plans for restaging, with major revisions her Judson show.

Alternative Title

• Dance Oral History Project.
• COVID-19 Dance Worker Narratives Project
• Dance Audio Archive.

Subject

• Brown, Emma Rose > Interviews
• COVID-19 (Disease) and the arts
• Social justice
• Black lives matter movement

Genre/Form

• Video recordings.
• Oral histories.

Note

• Interview with Emma Rose Brown (in New York, N.Y. ) conducted remotely by Cassie Mey (in New York, N.Y.) on February 23, 2022; as part of the COVID-19 Dance Worker Narratives Project for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• This interview is part of the COVID-19 Dance Worker Narratives Project, which was created by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division's Oral History Project in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent Black Lives Matter protests. The COVID-19 Dance Worker Narratives Project comprises 58 peer-to-peer interviews that were gathered from May 2020 to February 2022 from dance communities in New York City and across the United States. .
• For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3610
• Sound quality is excellent.
• The video recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The video files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
• Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

• Photography of the transript permitted for research purposes only.

Funding (note)

• The processing of the COVID-19 Dance Workers Narratives Project was made possible by a grant from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3610

OCLC

1427362862

Author

Brown, Emma Rose, Interviewee.

Title

Interview with Emma Rose Brown, 2022/ Conducted remotely by Cassie Mey on February 23, 2022; Producer: Dance Oral History Project

Imprint

2022

Playing Time

005700

Type of Content

spoken word

two-dimensional moving image

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

video

computer

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

video file

Restricted Access

Photography of the transript permitted for research purposes only.

Event

Recorded for the Dance Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, as part of the COVID-19 Dance Worker Narratives Project 2022, February 23 New York, N.Y.

Funding

The processing of the COVID-19 Dance Workers Narratives Project was made possible by a grant from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Local Note

Emma Rose Brown (b. 1991) is a Queens-based performer, multidisciplinary artist, and oral historian working in the field of dance. Emma is the Archives Director of the Community Library of Voice and Sound in Hudson, NY and is currently consulting on both an oral history project for the international advocacy organization, ACORN and the ongoing documentation project, Our Steps, Our Stories, an Irish Dance Legacy. From 2016-2022, she assisted in the production of the Dance Oral History Project at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Emma is a three time SU CASA artist-in-residence through Queens Council on the Arts where she's taught experimental documentary arts to older adults. Emma has presented original work at DOC NYC, Atlantic Center for the Arts, GIBNEY, Movement Research, New York Live Arts, and The School of Making Thinking. In November 2022, she performed in Mina Nishimura's work Mapping the forest in search of the opposite term for exorcist at Danspace Project. Emma is an MFA candidate in Integrated Media Art at Hunter College. (Biographical statement provided by the narrator in connection with this recording and reproduced here verbatim.)

Cassie Mey is a dancer and Oral History Producer for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. She records and cares for the stories of lives in dance, paying special attention to include absent voices from the archive. Since taking this role in 2016, Cassie has recorded over 100 original long-form interviews with dance elders. She also launched several series of oral histories to highlight tap dance artists, notable street and club dancers in the U.S., disabled dance artists, and she oversaw the creation of the COVID-19 Dance Workers Narratives Project. A lifelong dancer, Cassie has performed for and collaborated with New York based choreographers Molissa Fenley, Dean Moss, Jillian Peña, and Andrea Miller/GALLIM Dance, among others. She holds an MSILS from Pratt Institute and a BA in Dance from Mills College. (Biographical statement provided by the interviewer in connection with this recording and reproduced here verbatim.)

Connect to:

Added Author

Mey, Cassie, Interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3610

*MGZDOH 3610