Mark Transforms Phenomena into Movement on Stage
Mark Tompkins is New York City-based dance artist, performer, and educator who in his work seeks embodied visuals, touching influence and present expression. He deals with physicality, imagination, emotions, empathy and the meeting ground of art and science.
His goal is to focus on the dynamics of the "artwork" as a production system, rather than the product itself, as an artifact. In addition, his goal is to make uncompromising and passionate work, whatever the project and the role is. In his creations, he approaches the world with a warm and philosophic touch. He deals with physicality, imagination, emotions, empathy and the meeting ground of art and science. Tompkins explores new worlds, different cultures, and time-periods, and transforms found phenomena into movement on stage, photography, and video.
Modern dance theory and practice show rapid development, progress and tendency towards continuous self-examination, which contributes to the fact that canonized practices quickly radically challenge and overcome. One of the striking examples is the causal link between dance and choreography. Although the notion of choreography is canonized as a subcategory of dance, Mark Tompkins questions this relationship precisely, restoring dancing in this hierarchy.
The local understanding of contemporary dance relies on the so-called conceptual dance or ‘think dance’. Such practices of contemporary dance and choreography critically question "What is dance?" or "What is choreography?”. Such choreographic ideas problematize dance/choreography, examining and criticizing the theater apparatus itself, the role of the viewer, the principles of authorship and the way of production in dance and choreography. Choreography and body are rejected as institutionalized values, through the deconstruction of theater and the market, but also of the body and its discipline; the relationship between the art market and the economics of exchange, the principles behind the production and sharing of knowledge in dance, cooperation and networking of artists as individual authors and artists in institutions.
Mark’s work is built on highly physical contemporary dance and she collaborates with distinguished artists in the fields of visual art and sound in order to create worlds which shake emotions and activate your empathy. Furthermore, his works of choreographers highlight the extent of their love of and devotion to their particular styles of dance.
