BMC Dance: Yoggs Family Newsletter

BMC Dance: Yoggs Family Newsletter, 2014-present
Thursday, December 12, 2024 at 7pm
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center {120 College Street}
TICKETS – $15 General Admission / $10 BMCM+AC members + Students w/ID
 
Yoggs Family Newsletter, 2014-present is a trio dance created and performed by Taryn Griggs and Chris Yon, with their daughter Bea Yon.
The audience is integrated into the trio as momentary chorus members to their family stories, dances and drawing games. While the dances look “abstract” or non-narrative, this collection addresses how the trio captures experiences, creates memories, and attaches significance to when and where they dance together and who they meet along the way as part of their family story.
“Yon and Griggs are deadpan comics of rhythmized eccentric gesture…With Bea, clearly the child of that combination, they became something like a family in a Wes Anderson film.” – Brian Seibert, New York Times
BMC Dance, part of BMCM+AC’s ongoing Performance Initiative, represents a series of performances and conversations that examine Black Mountain College’s continuing influence on the world of dance.
The Yoggs have workshopped iterations of their newsletter at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA) as part of their Interstitial series, The Southern Theater (MPLS) as part of the Candy Box Festival, Goodyear Arts Center (CLT) as part of the North Carolina Dance Festival, the 2023 Modes of Capture Symposium in Limerick, and the 2024 La MaMa Moves Dance Festival in New York. This fall, they were awarded a Trillium Arts North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship Residency to complete a finale to this decade-long family performance exploration co-presented by American Dance Festival and the Nasher Museum of Arts in Durham, NC.
“The three form a close family unit. Yon and Griggs, it appears, performed and lived together for years before Bea joined. Watchful Bea, an endearing presence and wise beyond her years, has figured them out.” – Catherine Tharin, The Dance Enthusiast
Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs are both part of the Department of Theater and Dance at Appalachian State University. They met at the Bessie Schönberg Artist Residency at The Yard in 2002 and have been working together ever since. They were participants in the dance communities of New York City, Minneapolis, and Iowa City, before moving to Winston-Salem. Chris and Taryn’s choreographies have been presented across the US, Canada, Ireland, and France. In New York, in addition to the presentation of their work at La MaMa, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project, they appeared together in the work of David Neumann, Yoshiko Chuma, and Karinne Keithley Syers. During their years in the Twin Cities, they were both McKnight Fellows, co-curators for Choreographer’s Evening at the Walker Art Center, and their work was presented as part of the Walker’s Momentum Dance Series at The Southern, Red Eye Theater’s Isolated Acts, Jaime Carrera’s Outlet Performance Festival, and 9×22 at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Since moving to North Carolina, their work has been commissioned by the North Carolina Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and has been presented at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) with support from the Arts Council of Winston Salem Forsyth County and IPLACe at Wake Forest University.  They now live in Boone with their daughter and collaborator Bea, a seventh grader at Hardin Park Elementary.