Mark Bankin

Mark Bankin, dance diagram specialist, directs a repertory ensemble that works with archives and movement notation partitions to create rigorous formal structures of highly-technical choreographies. His dance dramas concerned with death anxiety, memory loss, silence, and interiority are devised together with multidisciplinary collaborators to create personal works that strip away superficiality in favor of raw emotional depth. He is influenced greatly by the postwar abstract expressionist lineages he's participated in since 2012 including working with Butoh masters Yoshito Ohno, Tetsuro Fukuhara, and Gekidan Kaitaisha, as well as studying with Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. His works increasingly eschew conventional proscenium settings, instead self-producing performances in unusual spaces such as a 19th-century warship, a soon-to-be-demolished warehouse, and a decrepit church basement. These site-specific dance evenings revitalize underutilized spaces as sites for art and communal gathering.