The conceptual dance artist Jill Sigman moves to a socially and ecologically-conscious beat in Weed Heart, her artist-in-residency performance at the Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Centre in New York. In the 70-minute performance, set in an installation with found assemblages and weeds planted in repurposed pots, Sigman and the multidisciplinary artist Katrina De Wees serve the audience freshly-brewed mint tea mixed with herbs that Sigman herself recently foraged. Wearing a headdress of leaves and twigs, and a mask made from the large leaf of a Paulownia tree that grows from a crack in the parking lot adjacent to the centre, Sigman dances and shows two videos: one where she speaks about her father’s declining health and about seeking guidance from a lovage plant, and another where she speaks about the Lenape Native Americans—Manhattan’s first residents—and about the 1991 discovery of a colonial-era African burial ground during construction near New York’s City Hall. The audience is served small cups of an aromatic lentil soup before Sigman leads a walk out to the tree in the parking lot and tenderly pours water on its roots. In Sigman’s words, Weed Heart represents our historically poor civil progress, the pertinence of connection and community today, and that “everything that has been shut down will come up again—in some way”. The powerful performance, which launched on 7 September, continues nightly from 14-17 September.
