Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Join us for Lecture on the Move, an in-gallery conversation featuring dance scholar Emma Clarke and Maru Lopez, MCASD’s Manager of Education. They will explore works and themes in MCASD’s exhibition Alex Katz: Theater and Dance.

This program is intended for adult audiences. Capacity is limited to 25 participants.

In the foreword to the accompanying exhibition catalogue of Alex Katz: Theatre and Dance, Jacqueline Terrassa writes, “Katz’s involvement with theater and dance has never existed apart from his paintings—not in subject, approach, style, or attitude.” Katz is an artist attentive to visuality, surface, and the act of looking; his large-scale vibrant works entail meticulous preparation and physicality to execute. For this Lecture on the Move, Clarke invites us to explore how Katz’s works ask us to spectate dance in its many layers. How do Katz’s paintings activate an attention to form, movement, and theatricality? How does his artistic process intersect with the choreographic? How also does he fit into a legacy of collaboration between visual and dance artists? Our conversation will be anchored by a number of key works from Alex Katz: Theatre and Dance to illuminate these questions and others.

Emma Clarke is a PhD candidate in the Theatre and Drama program at UC San Diego with a specialization in Critical Gender Studies. Emma's research intersects performance studies, dance, film, American studies, cultural studies, and feminist theory. Her PhD dissertation focuses on choreography and embodiment of female characters in mid-twentieth century American Westerns in live performance and on film. She holds a MA in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University for which her thesis centered on choreographic retrospectives in art museums.

Emma has presented her scholarship at conferences held by the American Society for Theatre Research, Dance Studies Association, and Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association. In Spring 2021, Emma curated a public digital archival exhibit “Choreographic Innovation at the Pillow,” for the Jacob’s Pillow Archives as part of a master’s practicum. Emma has also worked as an arts administrator for organizations including MCASD, the New York Philharmonic, and Signature Theatre Company. Emma received her BA in Dance from Bard College, where she received the Ana Itelman Prize for Performance.