It's been a minute since the last post! I've been assigned to handle the ol' blog and really should have blorrgged some stuff earlier but look I have been really very busy, I swear. It takes while, maybe 50 minutes to browse through every sale item on Opening Ceremony and sigh between each one. Jokes that are not-funny-but-real aside, I want to tell you about something the SINecdoche Dancers and I worked on in April.
Our sparkly cracker of a member Laurel Atwell was invited by the Public Art Fund to collaborate with Israeli-born sculptor Ohad Meromi and choreograph a performance piece for their spring benefit. We met Ohad and his family of conical wood sculptures in a massive former factory space in Long Island City, where there was enough room to be puffed upon jogging to reach the other side. Ohad, like Laurel, is interested in the intersections of visual and performance art, theater, spectacle and ritual. His structures are sturdy, demountable, and in their stark geometry appear markedly Constructivist/Dada-inspired. Ohad bought us blue rubber lined workman gloves to wear while handling them. A an eerie but somehow delightful Edward Burtynsky-style thing occurred whereby the walls of the factory space were painted blue and parts of each sculpture was painted blue here we were hauling large structures around and around...and around.
After we got used to the scale and weight of the sculptures, Ohad and Laurel had us experiment with pace and flow as we built scenes, landscapes and pockets of architecture before sweeping them into different positions, beginning again. Then we started creating different ways of holding them on our bodies and locomoting them/with them. From this strictly movement-based play grew a slew of mutants and fusions of robots and animals that we took turns to showcase across the space. Our result was a score that was highly structured but from which arose an eclectic mix of abstract form, flashes of exaggerated caricature and architectural relationships.
While we knew our rehearsal space would be nothing like our performance space there was only so much we could do to prepare for the chaos of bright lights and throngs of gala goers standing right where we might have set a sculpture down or spun one on it's head. Navigating the plates of tiny ceviché and the forest of tottering Louboutins added yet more unexpected facets to the piece, that (I do hope!) we took in our stride.
Until next time! xo Aya (posting through B's account but a bit too friday to change that)
