herStay

Leah Garland ved NYU/Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research, NY, anallized Monica Emilie Herstads dance in her paper "Feminism and Fashion?: The Choreography of Monica Emilie Herstad", (NYU/Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research, NY):

"Herstad has developed her choreography into a form of self-analysis, a hyper-responsive mode motivated by decisions to move. (...)

I think of her dance as a form of deep play, a term from Victor Turner, to describe an activity invested in spontaneity and profoundly meaningful to the participants. Within a frame of choreography, Herstad explores her unconscious and responds with clear choices. Like psychoanalytic practice, Herstad focuses awareness upon the immediate moment and repeatedly responds to the space, the sound, the audience, the video screen. (...)

Rather than a dancers body representing an idea or metaphor, Herstad's body in performance investigates that immediate time and space. (...) Consequently, there is no one answer to how her movements interrelate; the dance generates an analytic experience for the audience - without an answer, the meaning lies with the questioner and his/her formulation of questions and interpretations. This matter of interpretation, however, is shaped greatly by Herstad's exploration of an idea of femininity and style."

Professor Sondra Horton Fraleigh at New York State University wrote the following in her book Dancing into Darkness, published at Pittsburgh University Press, 1999:

"Now, wherever I go I learn about Butoh-influenced dance and theatre; in Canada, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, and most recently in Norway, the Butoh-inspired group of Monica Emilie Herstad. Susannah Akerlund carries on the tradition in Sweden and San Francisco hosts an annual international Butoh festival through d-net."

Both of the quoted texts were originally written in English and have not been altered in translation.