Brooklyn 100 Influencers: Monica Mirabile & Sigrid Lauren, FLUCT Dance Troupe
Monica Mirabile & Sigrid Lauren, the co-founders of FlucT dance troupe, are one harmonious duo. As best friends and dance partners, their process blends the physical, intellectual and emotional intellect of dance on a daily basis. Despite the challenges always of understanding finances and capital while running a dance group, Mirabile and Lauren’s commitment to their community is unfaltering. As Mirabile puts it: “FlucT has always been about processing information related to control and submission, authority and obedience of the information you absorb unknowingly through media and semiotic codes.” Now, more than ever, this seems both timely and relevant.
Monica Mirabile
How and why did you become involved in your line of work, resulting in your collaboration on FLUCT dance troupe?
I studied interdisciplinary sculpture with an interest in performance art. After dropping out for a year and finding something meaningful to me, I opened a DIY space in Baltimore and began developing movement-based work. This is when I met Sigrid, we melded. Both socio-politically minded, eager to develop the body in progress with the mind. We dived into each other.
Tell us a little bit about your day to day and what’s at stake when it comes to running your own dance group.
Day to day is analysis and poetry. We are best friends, talk all day via text if we don’t see each other. We generally let go of judgements of each other, everything is a conversation and puzzle to work with, work through. Creating work is time consuming and takes the whole body, all life. So amidst rehearsal play and dialogue, there are endless emails, organization and schedule coordinating. Luckily we are now managed by Christine Tran and we are able to focus on the conceptual more.
What do you find most fulling about your work?
The most fulfilling aspect of FlucT is the feeling of moving people toward a brutal honesty about the nature of culture through an abstract and creative project. FlucT has always been about processing information related to control and submission, authority and obedience of the information you absorb unknowingly through media and semiotic codes. At this time, it is so important to consider what that means and learn to process it.
What are your proudest achievements with this work and what are your greatest challenges?
Proudest achievements involve the community that has been built surrounding the movement studio we started three years ago: Otion Front. There is an incredible amount of love and energy that pours out the pores of this community. The challenges always have to do with understanding finances and capital.
Sigrid Lauren
How and why did you become involved in your line of work, resulting in your collaboration on FLUCT dance troupe?
Dancing & the body in motion have always been my most instinctive & central focuses from a very early age. I took dance until my teens, quit because of its rigid requirements; then moved into sports which allowed me to go to university. I quested for meaning in motion still, exploring studies in dance, therapeutic recreation, interpersonal communication, and now dance therapy. It took me a long time to find someone who understood the choreographic politics of ourselves and society, the production and value of gesture, and in 2010 I met Monica in Baltimore. Monica and I connected deeply, and with our mutual understanding we began to develop FlucT immediately.
Tell us a little bit about your day to day and what’s at stake when it comes to running your own dance group.
In FlucT, we are using a variety of applications and self generated systems to develop scores, so everyday feels different. Sometimes it’s entire days together to meditate, discuss, converse, research and piece our interests, current discoveries together. Sometimes we sit in computer programs, Ableton/Premiere all day, playing and recording sounds to map out a soundtrack. Sometimes we are in Otion Front Studio all day creating new choreography. In running FlucT, time is always moving too quick for our spacial selves.
What do you find most fulling about your work?
Honestly, I find moving with Monica, one on one in the studio, to be the most fulfilling. We discover new dance vocabulary and weight bearing techniques which require an amalgamation of trust, support, and dedication in real time. Even if we are upset with one another, when we are in the studio we’re forced to move past our egoistic emotions to create and produce. This process is beautiful.
What are your proudest achievements with this work and what are your greatest challenges?
My proudest achievement is any live FlucT show that we come away from unharmed and survive. It doesn’t matter how many times we rehearse a piece, there is so much emotion and expression stirred with an audience, that a piece is never actualized until it is performed live. The greatest challenge is the next live FlucT show.
Learn more about this year’s 100 Influencers in Brooklyn Culture.