“You have to admire how much it takes to perform a piece by yourself about yourself. I’ve seen solos that have failed — memorable only for bad decisions. I have also seen solos that have shifted the way I think about live art; a single gesture has moved me to tears. I have felt a facial expression ripple through my body…”
My response to Jack Ferver’s Two Alike in Hyperallergic Weekend.
“Four women rise from the front row of the theater, shrouded in long, dark hair. They make high-pitched ghostlike moans and wails while slithering onto the stage. It’s a chilling beginning, and one that will stay with me for some time…”
My response to luciana achugar’s FEELingpleasuresatisfactioncelebrationholyFORM in The Performance Club. Special thanks to Claudia La Rocco.
**Photo: Chrissy Passagno
electric midwife (for beth gill)
collage
6 x 4 inches
Nora Chipaumire’s The Last Heifer
Yvonne Rainer dreams of cakes (one-sided collaboration with Babette Mangolte / after Mary Gaitskill)
collage
17 x 26 inches
“The observation of devotion could finish you…
–Erín Moure, Pillage Laud
The act of going to performances occupies a bit of an obsessive and irrational space in my life. I liken it to ritual tied in with a sense of yearning and loneliness. There are feelings of uncertainty. Thus, when British choreographer, Sarah Michelson says: “People need faith. You can’t argue if faith exists. It’s here,” near the end of the Devotion Study #1 – The American Dancer, it resonates with me. I succumb.”
My response to Sarah Michelson’s Devotion Study #1 – The American Dancer at The Whitney Biennial on Idiom. Special thanks to James Wagner, Barry Hoggard, and Hannah Daly.
**Photo: Paula Court
“When writing about performance, I often feel caught between the body and the word. To attach language to bodies and movement is a complicated matter, calling into question the way words, grammar and syntax codify and enforce the body. A tinge of violence underlies this act of writing — a sort of pinning down of that which is constantly changing. More than a trace, writing marks the body.
I hesitate. I question. Racial identities within performance are too complicated to be pared down to the words black dance…”
My collaborative piece with Siobhan Burke on Platform 2012: Parallels, curated by Ishmael Houston-Jones at Danspace Project on Hyperallergic Weekend. Special thanks to Claudia La Rocco
**Photo: Ian Douglas
There’s shame in our passion and passion in our shame. Feelings may drag across the desert before being acknowledged or wanted. When these two women hold each other there is tenderness and vitality and a strenuous agenda. The love is there and vacant. It brews…
My response to Molly Lieber + Eleanor Smith: Beautiful Bone on The Performance Club.
**Photo: Brian Rogers
My review of Jen Rosenblit’s In Mouth and Vanessa Anspaugh’s Armed Guard Garden at New York Live Arts out now in the March issue of The Brooklyn Rail
**Photo: Ian Douglas
