Creating & Curating Space:
Interview by Katie Kern
Monica Mirabile is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends performance, painting, and installations to explore movement and bodily experience. Her curated Open Movement program, held every Sunday from 12-6pm at Performance Space New York, offers free shared studio space and inclusive movement workshops. Participants of all ages and abilities are invited to move freely, creating a community-driven space for self-discovery and creative expression through improvised movement and artist-led workshops.
Learn more about Open Movement and the 2025 schedule here
Learn more about Monica here
All Images Courtesy of Monica Mirabile
Basta: How do you describe your practice?
Monica: I'm an artist. My practice spans many mediums, but at the core of everything I do, I’m an artist. That means most of what I do is creative processing and building worlds.
My main focus is choreography. I'm a choreographer, a performance artist, and a movement director and educator. Most of my work is centered around the body and the mind.
Even with dance, I’m hesitant to use that word now because it feels like Movement encompasses so much more.
Basta: How was Open Movement conceived? What are some of the guiding principles you came in with?
Monica: Open Movement was conceived because I was asked to be part of a cohort in 2019. Performance Space New York invited 10 artists to essentially take over the space. There were three individuals, Jonathan Gonzalas, Janice Amaya, and myself, and two groups — BRUJAS and New Red Order.
We started in 2020. During that time, we were diving into the programming and given the budget and keys to restructure everything from within. Through that process, it became clear that a lot of what was happening there was sterile and exclusive, not very open to the people.
To make a long and complex story short, I wanted to start a series of workshops. I’ve been running Otion Front for 11 years now. My practice has always been with people—doing performance, movement, and experimenting with possibilities—with a focus on community and collaboration.
I think that’s part of why I was asked to be in this cohort in the first place. For me, that’s what should be at the crux of an institution.
At first, I was going to call this program Permission Slipping. It was exactly what Open Movement is today: a series of workshops taught by artists with movement practices. That includes performance artists, choreographers, dancers, health practitioners, really anyone exploring how we exist in our bodies.
Years ago, in the 1980s, Performance Space had a program called Open Movement in its basement when the building was still a squat. It continued as the space became more organized. It was basically a contact improv program. To honor that initiative, we decided to call this program Open Movement.
After 2020 and our takeover of the space, I stayed on and continued the program. Now, it’s been four years.
Basta: You work in multiple disciplines — movement, performance, directing, painting. How do all these mediums inform your curating?
Monica: I’m most interested in the ways we are constantly performing. I always call performance a study of behavior. It’s happening all around us, all the time. Choreography is happening all around us. It’s learned behavior that we interpret, and I’m always looking at the world, asking, “What is this? What are we obedient to? What are we capable of molding, shifting, and changing?”
When I’m curating Open Movement, I say at every intro that these are self-proclaimed movement practices. They are movements that artists have created or want to explore and share with others.
When I curate, I often reach out to someone whose work I know or I say, “I know this isn’t something you typically do, but would you be interested in exploring this further in a workshop setting?” That exploration makes Open Movement different from a dance class. It fills a different space, which is exciting to me.
Even though every session is about exploring the body and consciousness, each teacher brings a new perspective. That reflects what I love in my everyday life, so it feels special that I get to do it this way.
Basta: In your work, you also explore fringe cultures and communities, working with boundry-pushing artists like Sophie and protecting those spaces. How do you see Open Movement as a community-building space now and in the future, especially with questions about whether these spaces will survive?
Monica: That’s hard. I’m not sure it can survive. Safety is a complicated term. There are ways we can hold ourselves by listening to our bodies and doing what we need for ourselves. But there are also ways we have no choice in what happens to us—or our spaces.
The only thing I can do is communicate with intention. In Open Movement, a key tenet of the practice is self-agency, care for each other, and not committing harm. That needs to remain, and it needs to be repeated.
Having a space like Open Movement gives people the ability to find themselves uniquely within it. As a choreographer, I try to create spaces where people feel agency. As a healing practitioner, I know movement is vital for grounding yourself in material reality. It’s about using your body, mind, and voice to process information you’ve had no choice but to absorb, sometimes without consent.
You don’t have to look like anyone else doing it or have the same mobility, but you are the one doing it. That’s crucial because agency has been historically taken away. I’ll keep doing this regardless of where it is.
Basta: Is there a moment from Open Movement or specific feedback that solidified why you do this?
Monica: Honestly, every single day. Every single time it happens, I’m reminded why. There are hard days when I think, “Ugh, I have to go to Open Movement,” and then I get there, and it saves my life.
It’s so beautiful—everyone coming together, this wonderful thing being taught. I see now that people come and take what they need from it. Teachers get nervous, thinking, “What if everyone hates this?” and I always tell them, “It’s not possible.”
People are searching for something within themselves, and they want to be in community. They’ll find what they’re looking for, whether they love or hate the session. That makes me feel free, too.
Basta: What’s inspiring you right now as an artist?
Monica: Studies of consciousness and death. I’ve been attending near-death experience conferences and practicing visual meditation. I’m developing a class about Creative Intelligence, which combines movement and meditation.
It’s about developing a practice to feel whole in your body—grounded on this earth—while also exploring deep consciousness. I say it's about the spirit reaching the edges of the skin.
I’m also working on a performance that premieres in January 2026 at Pioneer Works. In collaboration with Mara Mckevitt. It’s about a family struggling with addiction. I just finished a month of jury duty in the narcotics division, so that’s an influence too.. It’s choreographed movement with text, so a play?—my first time working with text.
All of this blends into Open Movement too. We’ve done hypnosis workshops, sound baths, and meditative modalities. It’s playful and intellectual but also about letting go and moving through.
The real magic of Open Movement happens from 12 to 6. It’s scary for people because they don’t know what to do, but you don’t have to do anything. Stretch, listen to the music, start moving, and let go. By the end, you’re twirling around the space. It’s cathartic and inspiring.
I wish more people could experience it. I get to see the most beautiful performances every Sunday.