Monthly Archive for May, 2006

in a work cre­ated and per­formed ear­lier this year, we launched an explo­ration into that neb­u­lous realm between some most pop­u­lar bina­ries.
specif­i­cally, our inten­tions were to blur the dis­tinc­tion between the pub­lic and the pri­vate. in doing this, we obvi­ously had to ask, ‘what, exactly, are the ‘pri­vate’ ele­ments of a pub­lic per­for­mance?‘
the work was ini­ti­ated through the fab­ri­ca­tion of and com­mit­ment to cos­tumes that took shape using black stretch mesh and foam wire-insulation tub­ing. we con­structed indi­vid­ual bells/veils/tubes from the mesh, anchored to scuba-like head gear, and then sus­pended shin-level by a cir­cle of the tub­ing. the fin­ished shades were opaque enough to see through but dis­torted the expres­sions and move­ments of the bod­ies within.
with this barrier/lens in place, we ini­ti­ated the per­for­mance with our voices; five bod­ies filled the space with low throaty rum­blings and the obser­vant gig­gling began upfront. both sounds strangely per­cus­sive lurched forth to mark the start of the spec­ta­cle. the sparse motions of walk­ing and grum­bling cre­ated an eeire dis­tur­bance of air and, matched with the strangely veiled appear­ance of five women, brought along a pre­mo­ni­tion of illus­trated grief. sound car­ried through the veil despite the fabric’s seem­ing restric­tive nature.
this smirk-worthy morose dynamic per­sisted until all bod­ies took flat to the floor and breathed a unan­i­mous sigh. the releif con­tin­ued into an atonal rise and fall of song, no melody or rhythm other than the breath­ing pat­terns spe­cific to each body. hav­ing infused the ter­ri­tory with a sweet blan­ket of sad silli­ness, the dance pro­gressed into a series of con­ceal­ing and reveal­ing, push­ing and pulling, lift­ing and low­er­ing sequences that were orig­i­nally con­cieved with no rela­tion to the final cos­tume. the move­ments were designed as their own sep­a­rate lan­guage of ques­tions which gave light to another layer of pos­si­bil­i­ties as they paired up with the costumes.

In one of the first incar­na­tions of col­lec­tivesta­tic per­for­mance, ‘OhMeOhMy’ was a dance cre­ated in silence, then set together with an orig­i­nal score on the harp. we gen­er­ated two sep­a­rate enti­ties, move­ment and sound, and per­formed them as a shift­ing and spon­ta­neous rela­tion­ship. awe­somely, some 800 col­lege stu­dents wit­nessed this hap­pen­ing amidst a lineup of seri­ous booty-shaking and ‘sexy’ danc­ing, along with a few other group who chal­lenged these struc­tures in their own way.
the result in the house was a hush at the sight of the harp as it made its way to the cor­ner of the stage, a rus­tle when the audi­ence real­ized the live music was mak­ing its way though the audi­to­rium, a silence as the bod­ies, too, began mak­ing noise, and, finally, a much needed com­mu­nal gig­gle as the dance took shape and didn’t take itself too seriously.