Residency Focus: Music is sculpture in elastic space, sculpture is music in plastic space
During her spring 2025 Research Residency at the JRSP, dancer and movement artist Zoe Jordan focused on Rubinoff’s assertion that “Music is sculpture in elastic space, sculpture is music in plastic space.” Her inquiry explored ways of engaging with sculpture less through abstraction and more through embodied, material experience.
Jordan describes her method as an attempt to bridge the gap between the intellectual and the somatic: “I wished to bridge the gap between the intellectual and the somatic. I was seeking ways to engage with the sculpture, less from ideas and more from desire. Less mind more body. More being in the actual, practical, material doing-ness.”
Moving through space in conjunction with Rubinoff’s sculptures, Jordan’s improvisational and somatic movement practice erases the boundary between sculptural and somatic inquiry, allowing the two artistic forms to become intertwined.
Production image from Plastic : Elastic, Zoe Jordan’s 2026 dance-film project at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park.
Contributor Biography
Zoe Jordan is a Vancouver-based dance clown, mover, and improvisor. Her movement-based practice explores the body in conjunction with the natural world, and moving in situ anchors her work. Her influences include performance and movement improvisation, Authentic Movement, Gaga, Logomotion, Body Weather, contemporary dance, contact improvisation, and clowning.
