The Vortex

“Sternberg, Tromble, and Sumner have created a powerful and timely work…”
—Jeff Slayton, LA Dance Chronicle

The Vortex live performances, artworks, and videos are based on stories from scientists who are also women, of color, or gender nonconforming. The Vortex series of artworks also includes interactive 3-D virtual installations, physical installations, drawings, prints, and videos, often made in collaboration. As a whole, the extended Vortex series explores intersections between the unconscious, imagination, and knowledge.

Below top row, choreographer Donna Sternberg, with dancers Christian Fajardo and Nicole Powell, improvise movement with the Dream Vortex in 2015. Below, images from The Vortex, 2018-2020. Montage with photos by Rose Eichenbaum.

About The Vortex

The Vortex emerged from a month-long dialogue during the first art and science session at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Northern California, where my collaborator Dawn Sumner and I had many conversations about creativity with our fellow residents. Several of the scientists had significant stories of encountering social stereotypes that influenced their creativity and careers in unpredictable and surprising ways. The vivid quality of these emotionally charged stories reminded me of the dreams I had been drawing, verbal reports that could be translated into visual compositions full of compressed meanings. This realization coalesced with the desire of choreographer Donna Sternberg, who was also in residence, to make a dance with the Dream Vortex; our joint project, ongoing as of 2020, is The Vortex.

Performances

Donna Sternberg & Dancers presented workshop performances as Outside the Vortex, at Diavolo Studio, Los Angeles, 2016, and performances at the Odyssey Theater, Los Angeles, 2018. Excerpts of the work were presented at a workshop for the Leonardo Convening in San Francisco, 2019. In 2020, the pandemic postponement of a live performance scheduled for the UCD Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts opened the opportunity for The Vortex performance video, to be presented by the Mondavi Center with a livestream artist Q&A December 5, 2020, at 7:30 pm. Contact the artist or Donna Sternberg & Dancers for information on presenting the performance video or live performance.

Link

Donna Sternberg & Dancers

Video

excerpt from Outside the Vortex Test-of-Concept workshop

Collaborator Conversation

Donna Sternberg and I discussed making The Vortex video at a2ru in 2021. Our talk, “Telling Stories Without Words: The Making of the Vortex,” starts at 12:43 in this recording.

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Meredith Tromble

Artist and Author

The Vortex