MSP 202: Jill Sifah Sigman
Release Date: 6.12.26
TO DOWNLOAD PODCAST OR LISTEN:
Authenticity in Motion: Jill Sifah Sigman on Dance, Props, and Purpose
Episode 202: Show Notes.
From her early experiences of finding freedom in ballet classes, to becoming a devoted bunhead, to her modern dance studies at Princeton, and her current work in choreography and movement artistry, Jill Sifah Sigman has a storied creative legacy. During this episode, we dive deep into the origins of the themes that continue to inform her work today. We also unpack the layered meaning of working with waste and donated objects to build structures she uses in her performances, how this differs from props and sets, and how this deeply meaningful practice shapes her work. Next, we explore the tension between the artifice we often associate with performance and the authentic expression she has always valued most about her dance practice. Building on this, we dive into what it might look like to strike a balance between work that is accessible and work that resonates with audiences in a more meaningful way. Join us for a truly expansive conversation with today’s inspiring guest.
Key Points From This Episode:
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- Jill Sifah Sigman’s journey to dance, from early ballet to choreography and movement artistry.
- How her studies shaped her relationship to archetypes, philosophy, and movement.
- Starting her company in 1998 after graduating from Princeton.
- Her journey to making and understanding site-specific work.
- Starting to work with waste in 2007, before it began to inform the message of her work.
- Meaningful opportunities to repurpose waste into structures used in her dance productions.
- Her journey to working with foraged plants.
- Distinguishing between the artifice and authenticity of performance.
- How plants, movement, and clay came to shape her project, Reseeding.
- Exploring insatiability, hoarding, and the antidote of soil.
- The power of art-making in facilitating connection.
- Navigating the tension between creating recognizable work and embracing experimentation.
- How her full-time care of her father informed her work and her response to the present.
Jill Sifah Sigman is a queer interdisciplinary artist and agent of change whose work exists at the intersection of dance, visual art, and social practice. Based in New York City, she founded jill sigman/thinkdance in 1998 to think about pressing social issues through the body. In 2016, she developed Body Politic, a program of workshops, trainings, and performance laboratories to ask salient political questions somatically, and in 2022 she initiated a Social Justice Movement Lab for artist-activists. Working with things we discard such as waste and weedy plants, Sigman helps us to re-build our relationships with the natural world and each other in meaningful and empathic ways. Sigman has created community by building site-specific structures out of waste, dancing in public spaces, food sharing, and tea serving. She is the author of Ten Huts, published by Wesleyan University Press (2017), about choreographing huts out of garbage in different parts of the world. Sigman has been the first Gibney Dance Community Action Artist in Residence; a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography; a Distinguished Guest Artist at the University of San Francisco Performing Arts & Social Justice program; a resident artist at Movement Research, Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology (Mexico), The Kri Foundation (India), and The Rauschenberg Residency; a Choreographic Fellow at the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research at NYU; and a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University. She was born and raised on occupied Lunaape Canarsee homeland, also known as south Brooklyn.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Jill Sigman
Jill Sigman on Instagram
Maria Tallchief
The Firebird
The Joffrey
Jim May
Meagan Woods
Ze’eva Kohn
The Birth of Tragedy
Anna Sokolow
Dancing in the Streets
OUTRAGE
Podcast produced by: The Moving Architects
Interviewer: Erin Carlisle Norton