AT MATINS OR EVENSONG
EVENING LENGTH PREMIERE, March 2026, Kestrels, Brooklyn, NY
Choreography by Emma Judkins
Performed by Emma Judkins and Grace Yi-Li Tong
Music by Adam Schatz
Lighting Design by Shana Crawford
Costumes by Ayano Elson
Choreography by Emma Judkins
Performed by Emma Judkins and Grace Yi-Li Tong
Music by Adam Schatz
Lighting Design by Shana Crawford
Costumes by Ayano Elson
At Matins or Evensong is an evening-length dance rooted in time, reverence, darkness, and beauty. It stems from an obsession with the late summer ubiquitousness of the goldenrod plant in my childhood home state of Maine and surrounding Northeast. For a little over three weeks, this bright yellow wildflower appears everywhere, covering fields, highway medians, and backyards, and then starts to disappear, announcing the beginning of the end. Its reliable lifecycle led me to regard the plant’s timely blooming as not only a tether to the passage of time and personal change, but as a universal signifier of the fold of the year, the tumbling, light-chasing, equinoctial slip of the season’s shift. This interval of moving from light to dark and back is archetypal; it lives in the turn of the day, years, phases internal and communal. I draw on these repetitions, attempting to notate the religiosity of vanishing light, the quiet witnessing of heading into the dark.
PRESS:
"IMPRESSIONS: Emma Judkins Presents 'At Matins or Evensong' at Kestrels, Brooklyn" by Sarah Cecilia Bukowski
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At Matins or Evensong (film version)
August 2025, East Dover, VT, video password: MATINS 
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At Matins or Evensong (solo version)
May 2025 at Sundays on Broadway at WeisAcres, New York, NY 
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RESEARCH PHASE: OCTOBER 2023 - MAY 2025
Like switching radio stations, the slip of the sun underneath the horizon's comfortable blanket
And the latter in its crepuscular half life, an exponential pacing to its extinguishing
Walk through the night to get to the morning
Exit darkness and walk through light to receive it again
And the latter in its crepuscular half life, an exponential pacing to its extinguishing
Walk through the night to get to the morning
Exit darkness and walk through light to receive it again
ADJUNCT
DEBORAH
PREMIERE - [Re]Happening 11, Black Mountain College, Black Mountain, NC (April 2023)
DEBORAH for this performance was Eleanor Hullihan, Jimmy Jolliff, Emma Judkins and Adam Schatz, with Asli Bulbul
DEBORAH for this performance was Eleanor Hullihan, Jimmy Jolliff, Emma Judkins and Adam Schatz, with Asli Bulbul
MUSIC VIDEO CHOREOGRAPHY: "TWO" BY FLOCK OF DIMES
Directors: Lola Bowler & Cricket Arrison
Gesture Choreographer: Jarod Hanson
Dance Choreographer: Emma Judkins
Performers: Jenn Wasner & Cricket Arrison
Gesture Choreographer: Jarod Hanson
Dance Choreographer: Emma Judkins
Performers: Jenn Wasner & Cricket Arrison
THE SPACE WE MAKE
Solos, sketches, and set pieces made for works The White Whale The White Wail, and DOLORES I STROKE, 2012-2015
