The Moving Architects

The Moving Architects, under Artistic Director Erin Carlisle Norton, is a female-centric dance company that channels the authentic complexity of both the current and historically lived female experience into dance works edged with charged movement and feminine strength. The resulting dance works reveal intense female performances that make connections between bodies in motion, location and space, as well as historical and physical experience. The Moving Architects also provide quality movement classes, workshops, residencies, and opportunities for dialogue and discussion. ________________________________ The Story. Erin Carlisle Norton founded The Moving Architects on New Year’s Day, 2007. Growing up in the nooks and crannies of a Victorian house and the Neo-Gothic church outside of Pittsburgh, PA where her father was pastor, she developed a heightened awareness of her experience of physical spaces long-steeped in the passage of time. Adding to this her vigilance in exploring and promoting the female voice, TMA is now a female-centric dance company known for channeling the authentic complexity of both the current and historically lived female experience into dance works edged with charged movement and feminine strength. Norton’s dance works reveal intense female performances that draw from her dance training, academic studies, and independent physical research in Laban Movement Analysis, modern and postmodern academic dance studies, and improvisational study. Since its inception, and as the company has moved from Chicago to the NJ/NYC area, The Moving Architects has taken strides to engage with communities regionally, nationally, and internationally through teaching and performing projects. In March 2011, the company completed a tour of Central Asia sponsored by The U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassies. In 2012 the company had a short residency in Guatemala City, and Norton was invited to teach and perform throughout Morocco with Association D’Fleur with sponsorship by the U.S. Embassy. In terms of new choreographies, the 2011 work PLUCK was choreographed and set long-distance between Chicago, IL and Columbus, OH via Skype video-conferencing software, and the evening length work Demure as Dynamite, which premiered in full in April 2015 at Triskelion Arts, looked to women in the bible as delineated by the poetry of Norton’s late grandfather Thomas John Carlisle. Fall 2015 also marked a new research and performance project with Shana Simmons Dance (Pittsburgh) and The Moving Architects with “Objective I” which explored editing in dance with both NYC and Pittsburgh audiences. The Moving Architects has been a selected member of Pentacle’s The Gallery since 2013. Since relocating to the NYC area in 2013, TMA has performed with Pentacle at Ailey Citigroup Theater, Green Street Studios (Boston), The Dance Complex (Boston), Dixon Place, and APAP at City Center, with other performance events in the NYC area including Triskelion Arts, Gibney Dance, Green Space, Chez Bushwick, South Orange Performing Arts Center, Nimbus Dance Works Choreographic Residency, New Dance Alliance Festival, Making Moves Dance Festival, and Montclair Art Museum. TMA has been featured at national venues including Links Hall (Chicago), Columbus Dance Theater (OH), Kelly-Strayhorn Theater (PA), and Wilson College (PA), among others. Norton received the prestigious 2014 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Choreographic Fellowship and frequently teaches master classes in academic and community settings across the country. In June 2015, TMA launched “Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast” a dance interview podcast led by Norton that features the choreographers, dancers, educators, media artists, administrators, collaborators, and other “shapers” of the dance field. As The Moving Architects celebrates a decade of dancemaking and teaching, the company under Norton’s direction continues to grow and research new projects and partnerships, exploring fresh creative and conceptual tools with each new venture.