Peter Redgrave
Peter Redgrave is a cultural worker, an artist, and educator, based in Baltimore, Maryland. A multivalent performer, his work oscillates between improvisation and score-based pieces, solo practice and collaboration, jest and critique. Redgrave has performed with Mother Country Death Rattle, Smelling Salt Amusements, Breath of the Magi, and Move Move Collaborative among others.
Redgrave worked with zines and artist’s books under the mentorship of Sally Alatalo at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with a BFA in 1993. He went on to work in manufacturing briefly, before moving abroad in 1999. Peter began performing in musical acts in the Chicago area. He was a founding member of a punk rock marching band, Mother Country Death Rattle and a multi-disciplinary art duo, The Smelling Salt Amusements.
In 2000, Redgrave began working in education, initially as an English instructor in Bu Shi Ban in Taiwan and then an early childhood language teacher in Germany. While living in Taiwan, Redgrave studied double reed music with Liu Chiang-Pin. This exposure to a completely different way of conceptualizing music got Redgrave thinking about scores, interpretation, and cultural pedagogy. Exploring culture and learning as both tools and conditions, remains a significant part of Redgrave’s work. In 2008 Redgrave returned to the US to complete a Masters of Education at the University of Maryland. Since then, he has centered his teaching work in Baltimore, MD. He has worked with age groups from kindergarten to active mature adults.
After a skateboarding injury in 2009, Peter began taking dance classes with the Effervescent Collective. By 2012, he was performing in the dance community in Baltimore. Experiencing ways of thinking with the body about history, mathematics, and the human capacity to feel the presence of other people invigorated Redgrave. He began to seek out workshops in everything from Noguchi Taiso to Contact Improv to puppetry to Pochinko clowning.
In response to taking performance workshops, Redgrave founded The Move Move Collaborative in 2017. Part movement skill share, part performance building intensive, part least hierarchical pedagogy experiment, and part score based performance festival; Move Move is an evolving space dedicated to communication across difference and performance as a tool for cultural production.
In his solo pieces, Redgrave reflects on his teaching career, the history of performance, and the shape of vulnerability. He plays music, moves, and animates objects along the way.