"Dance, for our family, is a parenthesis for life experience. Periods of our lives that we spent working on choreography coincide with periods of major things happening in our lives and in the world. The ephemerality of our performance is informed by the ephemerality of childhood and parenthood. While the dances we make look "abstract" or non-narrative, this collection of dances addresses how we capture experiences, create memories, and attach significance to when and where we dance together and who we meet along the way as part of our family story. This iteration at the Nasher is a culminating event for this project as we start a new chapter in our lives having just moved to live and work in Boone."
-The Yoggs
American Dance Festival and the Nasher Museum co-present YOGGS FAMILY NEWSLETTER, 2014-present, an immersive experience where the audience is led through the Great Hall of the Nasher Museum by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs alongside their daughter, Bea Yon. The audience is integrated into the trio as momentary chorus members to their family stories, dances and drawing games. While the dances look "abstract" or non-narrative, this collection addresses how the trio captures experiences, creates memories, and attaches significance to when and where they dance together and who they meet along the way as part of their family story.
"Yon and Griggs are deadpan comics of rhythmized eccentric gesture...With Bea, clearly the child of that combination, they became something like a family in a Wes Anderson film."
- Brian Seibert, New York Times
Photo by: Steven Pisano
The Yoggs, have workshopped iterations of their newsletter at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA) as part of their Interstitial series, The Southern Theater (MPLS) as part of the Candy Box Festival, Goodyear Arts Center (CLT) as part of the North Carolina Dance Festival, the 2023 Modes of Capture Symposium in Limerick, and the 2024 La MaMa Moves Dance Festival in New York. This fall, they were awarded a Trillium Arts North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship Residency to complete a finale to this decade-long family performance exploration in the Nasher’s Great Hall. Their residency timed just a week before their performance will be spent in Trillium Arts’ giant red barn experimenting with how they will choreograph the roving audience’s paths and implicating them as fellow performers.
Video still courtesy of the artist
"The three form a close family unit. Yon and Griggs, it appears, performed and lived together for years before Bea joined. Watchful Bea, an endearing presence and wise beyond her years, has figured them out."
- Catherine Tharin, Dance Enthusiast
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About Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs
Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs are both starting new positions in the Department of Theater and Dance this fall at Appalachian State University. Yon, who had been an adjunct professor since 2016, just started full time as an Assistant Professor. Griggs joins as an adjunct after seven years at UNCSA. They 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 Winston-Salem. Chris and Taryn's choreographies have been presented across the US, Canada, Ireland, and France. In New York, in addition to the presentation of 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. During their years in the Twin Cities, they were both McKnight Fellows, co-curators for Choreographer's Evening at the Walker Art Center, and their work was presented as part of the Walker's Momentum Dance Series at The Southern, Red Eye Theater's Isolated Acts, Jaime Carrera's Outlet Performance Festival, and 9x22 at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Since moving to North Carolina, their work has been commissioned by the North Carolina Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, and has been presented at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) with support from the Arts Council of Winston Salem Forsyth County and IPLACe at Wake Forest University. They now live in Boone with their daughter and collaborator Bea, a seventh grader at Hardin Park Elementary.
About the Department of Theatre and Dance
One of seven departments housed in the College of Fine and Applied Arts, the Department of Theatre and Dance's mission is to facilitate transformative experiences for students and the public, which cultivate compassionate, creative, and collaborative communities through theatre and dance. The department also offers coursework for integrated learning through the arts to the general university student population. Its dynamic co-curricular production program provides exemplary theatre and dance experiences to departmental students, the university community, and the region. www.theatreanddance.appstate.edu.
About the College of Fine and Applied Arts
Appalachian State University's College of Fine and Applied Arts is a dynamic and innovative group of seven academic departments, bringing together a variety of perspectives, experiences, and real-world education to provide unique opportunities for student success. The college has more than 3,500 undergraduate and graduate majors. Its departments are Applied Design, Art, Communication, Military Science and Leadership, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment, and Theatre and Dance. Learn more here.
About Appalachian State University
As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, affordable education for all. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.
Chris Yon and Daughter, Bea
Chris Yon and Daughter, Bea