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Janine Antoni, Anna Halprin, Stephen Petronio, Rope Dance, 2015. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of the artists and The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

Questions of Practice: Choreographer Stephen Petronio and Artist Janine Antoni on Performance in a Museum Setting

Questions of Practice: Choreographer Stephen Petronio and Artist Janine Antoni on Performance in a Museum Setting

In conjunction with Ally, a performance-as-exhibition at The Fabric Workshop and Museum that reimagines the traditional retrospective, we asked artist Janine Antoni and choreographer Stephen Petronio to discuss the process of preparing audiences for performances in a museum setting. “It’s really about how the institution and the artist ‘open’ to the public…[It’s] not just opening the door; it’s an invitation into an experience,” Petronio says.

Choreographer Stephen Petronio and artist Janine Antoni on performance in a museum setting. Filmed at The Fabric Workshop and Museum on April 22, 2016.

Supported by the Center, Ally is on view through July 31, 2016. View the performance schedule here.


Janine Antoni creates work in performance art, sculpture, and photography. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and others. Antoni has participated in the Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, and the Johannesburg Biennale, and has received many prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Creative Capital Artist Grant.

Stephen Petronio has honed a unique language of movement that speaks to the intuitive and complex possibilities of the body, informed by its shifting cultural context. In the past 30 years, Petronio has created over 35 works for his company, and has been commissioned by some of the most prestigious modern and ballet companies around the world. Petronio is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.