Artist Statement
Taryn Griggs and Chris Yon create original dance works that are deadpan slapstick, understated melodrama, autobiographical science fiction, cubist vaudeville, asymmetrically consonant explorations of magic and virtuosity in everyday movement.
"a bird you must not miss" at the American Dance Festival. Photo by Madeline O'Brien
Bio
Taryn Griggs and Chris Yon met at the Bessie Schönberg Artist Residency at The Yard in 2002 and have been working together ever since. They were participants in the dance communities of New York City, Minneapolis, and Iowa City, before moving to North Carolina. Their choreographies have been presented across the US, Canada, Ireland, and France. In New York, they presented their work at La MaMa, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project. They appeared together in the work of David Neumann, Yoshiko Chuma, and Karinne Keithley Syers. In the Twin Cities, they were both McKnight Fellows, co-curators for Choreographer’s Evening at the Walker Art Center, and they presented work at The Southern, Red Eye Theater, Outlet Performance Festival, and the Bryant Lake Bowl. In North Carolina, their work has been commissioned/presented by the North Carolina Dance Festival, Nasher Art Museum, American Dance Festival, Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center, they developed Interstitial: A site specific dance series between art exhibits at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and they are 2024 Trillium Arts North Carolina Choreographic Fellows. Griggs and Yon are based in Boone where they are both on faculty at Appalachian State University.
chrisandtaryn.com