I think about the body, or the concept of the body, often for my performance work. I don’t think about it perhaps the way an theater actor or a dancer may think of the body while creating compositions or stagework, though I incorporate training and conceptualization from both realms. I think about the body from the position of writing for performance and what it ends up turning into is usually a form of hybrid theater/movement-poetry. A mashup of sorts that works out in its non-linear narratives and visuals. My work somehow tries to bridge the abstractness of movement and language, which are often vying with each other.
So, I’ve been creating this performance piece and it’s been an interesting journey. This weekend I’ll show another version of it in San Francisco/Berkeley. I’m excited about it, but also a bit nervous as it’s not meant to be a solo show though it’s proving to help me create this complex character, an alterego of multiple personalities packed into a mythological body of sorts.
This version incorporates three different video renditions with performance work/choreography that was created in collaboration with Carl K. Li, Jeanie Tse, Niina Pollari, Rebekah Mindel and Rebekah Steinfeld (who also directed the WAXworks version and helped with the Hallwalls version and whose work has been a foundation for the piece’s subsequent versions). It also includes soundscapes of the text I’ve written and video work of skylines (as the piece is set in a mythological NYC). I’ll be performing it as an interactive piece this time.
Labyrinthine in its structure, it is always encompassing yet another layer of complexity with every new turn.
Here’s more info on the performance:
Autumn Widdoes 