UCR Department of Dance

Herd/Heard 
by Jennifer Hong, 

MFA Candidate in Experimental Choreography 
In collaboration with the dancers: Bambi Anderson, Amelia Charter, Megan Kendzior, and Banghan Kim.

taisha paggett, MFA Committee Chair      

Herd/Heard is a live performance and living slow medicine score by Jennifer Hong that brings together five intergenerational, multi-raced women through an ongoing improvisational movement process rooted in mutual care, group dynamics, and individual expression. Drawing on her training with Anna Halprin and Frey Faust (among many others), somatic practices with a herd of domesticated and feral horses, and the contributions of her collaborators, Herd/Heard is a deep practice of space holding that allows for vulnerability, difference, and the wildness of being. 

 October 31, 2020 
Saturday, 3:33 pm to sunset
Live event in a backyard in Venice, California (Tongva land)  

Or participate in your home by practicing our score with your household. 
You can download the score here.

Born and raised in California, Jennifer Hong began her dance training at the age of five with Miss Jeannie studying tap, ballet, and jazz through Parks and Recreation at Live Oak Park in Temple City, and as a public school cheerleader in the first grade at Longley Way Elementary School. She studied modern dance at Reed College, where she graduated in 2000 with a BA in Chinese Literature and was a Watson Fellowship recipient. She performed with various Portland-based choreographers over the next decade (Keith V. Goodman, Tere Mathern, Mary Oslund, and Minh Tran, among others). In LA, Jennifer has invested in meditation, breathing, and healing, and continued performing for others with the curiosity of how one crafts work. She co-facilitated the Santa Monica Contact Improv Jam http://contactimprovla.com from 2014-2018, and has taught contact improv as a guest lecturer at UCLA, CalArts, CSULA and Pieter Space. She is a pre-candidate of the Axis Syllabus International Research Network, which brings together work in biomechanics, physics, clinical research, anthropology, and somatic practice. She is currently a third-year MFA in Experimental Choreography at UC Riverside. 

Herd/Heard is presented by the University of California, Riverside, Department of Dance and created in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree in Experimental Choreography. 

Support provided by the University of California, Riverside, Department of Dance; College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Dean’s Office.