Northwest Film Forum invites you to join choreographer-dancer-videographer-acupuncturist Paige Barnes on November 11 at 7pm for an evening of dance videos, live pulse reading, and a discussion of empathy. Barnes has spent the last five years completing a study of Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture. The combination of embodied research and Chinese Medicine in her studies has informed her choreographic practice, resulting in two collections of one-minute dance videos: #danceadayinshanghai and #pulsereadingproject.

The evening will begin with a series of social media installations throughout the Forum, followed by two dance-video collections in the theater that Barnes produced in conjunction with her research in Chinese Herbal Medicine in Shanghai (#dancedayinshanghai) and her experience with pulse reading (#pulsereadingproject). Between the two screenings, Barnes will hold a live pulse reading and respond to the reading with dance. The evening will end with Art’s Role in Building Empathy & Connection in our Dystopian Current Events, a conversation between NWFF Executive Director Courtney Sheehan, SAM Public Programs Manager Philip Nadadsky, DAOM Program Director Bastyr University Kathleen Lumiere, and choreographer-dancer-acupuncturist Paige Barnes.

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About #shanghaipulse – Using dance-videos as a daily diary, Barnes mapped her embodied experiences of her Shanghai internship in Chinese herbal medicine – a body cartography. For three weeks, she shared these videos on Instagram and other social media.

About #pulsereadingproject – A collection of short dance videos that bridge Barnes’s dance research and Traditional Chinese pulse reading. Paige Barnes collaborated with poet Vanessa DeWolf, musician Evan Flory-Barnes, and animator Stefan Gruber in a three-month residency at SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park. She also created three original evening-long, site-specific works sourcing the pulse-reading materials and continuing collaborations between dance, poetry, music and animation.

All of these videos were initially created on an iPhone for Instagram.

About Paige

Paige Barnes has been creating work as an interdisciplinary movement artist since 1996, pursuing thematic throughlines of vulnerability, intimacy, and transformation. She constructs intimate portraits motivated by animal symbolism and ritual that are often informed by her study and practice of Chinese Medicine and GYROTONIC®. Among her past collaborators are Pablo Cornejo, Amy Denio, Vanessa DeWolf, and Evan Flory-Barnes. paigebarnes.in