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

Megan MayerI 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