James McGinn

James McGinn is an artist and movement theorist researching improvisational potentiality via new materialism and comparative topology. His projects scale various physical/virtual contexts that support the development of experimental, practice-based research methodologies. Initially trained by his parents, Peter McGinn (formerly of Edinburgh College of Art) and Deborah Vinton (formerly of Cecchetti USA, FISTD), McGinn continued his professional development at The New School's Eugene Lang College (BA-Liberal Arts), The Performing Arts Research & Training Studios/Brussels (P.A.R.T.S.- Research Cycle), University of the Arts/Philadelphia (MFA-Dance), and as a danceWEB scholar at Impulstanz/Vienna. He has been greatly influenced by performing in the work of Jonah Bokaer, Wally Cardona, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, John Jasperse, Daniel Linehan, Ryan McNamara, Mårten Spångberg, and Robert Steijn, among others. 

McGinn’s choreographic work has been performed in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Senegal, Turkey, and throughout the U.S. with support from the Knight Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and American Dance Abroad. He has received residency support from BUDA/Kortrijk (Belgium), ccBe/Berchem (Belgium), Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans (France), Laboratorio de Artes Vivas de Tenerife (Spain), and Sarasota Contemporary Dance (U.S.) and was a finalist in the 2014 Danse Élargie choreographic competition at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, founded by Musée de la Danse/Rennes and Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. While on a choreographic trajectory with wpZimmer in Antwerp, Belgium, from 2014 to 2017, McGinn developed his initial notion of cellular movement. Its theoretical framework explores a post-humanist approach to mapping a new metaphysics and microphysics of improvisational choice-making.