Durning is interested in choreography as a ways and means to mobilize questions about how our basic need for connection and communication aligns, and often misaligns, with how our thinking and feeling come to form and action. She has an ongoing practice, nonstopping, which has yielded several performance works, including her solo inging (based on nonstop speaking). She has performed inging more than 50 times across the US, in Europe and Canada. In support of my new project Dark Matters, Durning has received residencies at Seoul Dance Center, the Rauschenberg Foundation, MANCC, and at DNK in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Jeanine has had the privilege to collaborate with many choreographers, including Deborah Hay since 2005, working as performer, consultant, choreographic assistant, coach, and from 2011-2013, as consultant to the Motion Bank, a project of William Forsythe, on Ms. Hay’s choreographic and scoring practices. Durning has shared some of her practices all over the world and was recently Guest Lecturer at Smith College in Western, Massachusetts.

Upcoming projects for 2020 include a new work commissioned by Candoco/London, performing Big Dance Theater’s adaptation of Anne Carson’s Antigonik (playing the titular role), and a European tour of Deborah Hay’s new work Animals on the Beach. ____________________________________________________________

Durning has received numerous awards and residencies in support of her work, including two New York Foundation for the Arts award and the Alpert Award for Choreography. She was nominated for the US Artist Fellowship and an Anonymous was a Woman grant. Between 2014 and 2016, she was a Movement Research Artist in Residence, a Gibney Dance Dance in Process Resident, and a recipient of a space grant through Brooklyn Arts Exchange, all in support of her practice nonstopping.

Durning has a dedicated teaching practice and has been faculty at SNDO/Amsterdam and HZT/Berlin on and off since 2009. She has been guest faculty at New School/Lang College and teaches often through Movement Research in NYC, as well as acted as “outside eye” to many choreographers’ works. She has been commissioned to create original work and since 2002 has created over fifteen works for companies, performers, and institutions across the US and in Europe.

She is often invited to act as ‘outside eye’ to many choreographers’ works. As a performer, Jeanine has had the privilege over the years to collaborate with many choreographers of diverse creative concerns and priorities including Susan Rethorst, David Dorfman, Lance Gries, Chris Yon, Zvi Gotheiner, Martha Clarke, Richard Siegal, and Bebe Miller.  

Photo of Jeanine Durning by Snorri Sturluson.

Front page photo of dark matter, selfish portrait by Chris Cameron.