What defines the boundaries of theatre and dance? When does one begin to fall into the other, becoming a mutual adaptation? What does this interaction do for the performer that embodies it? These are the questions that Soomi Kim and Laura Peterson seek to answer in their piece Testing², a multimedia piece that opens at The Tank on December 5, 2024. As this performance by Kim and Peterson will exhibit, the limitations of theatre and dance are entirely self-inflicted. To believe that the two performance art forms exist in separate spheres would be to believe that they are not in conversation with each other or transform the other, a dangerous assumption that restricts the possibilities of each. Kim and Peterson seek to challenge this belief and the limitations it imposes on theatre and dance, stretching what both can communicate when they work in tandem. At the same time, they will experiment with the relationship between audio and live performance in this piece, an exciting collaboration that enhances its message as it draws from the recordings of other artists. All in all, Testing² relies on the interaction between performance art forms and dares to explore what one reveals in the other.
This fascinating conversation between art forms is not at all new for dancer and theatre-maker Soomi Kim. Throughout her career, she has never been one to shy away from creating hybrid art and demonstrating its unique ability to tell a story. She commonly relies on multiple forms of performance art to tell a biographical or autobiographical story, allowing herself to experiment and embody a life’s trajectory overtime. She is perhaps best known for her work on a trilogy of plays inspired by the lives of Bruce Lee, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Kathy Change, three individuals who greatly influenced both performance and political advocacy. These three performances took place at the National Asian American Theatre Festivals in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, and in each performance, Kim allowed for the connections between these three individuals to come to life in her own body. She has also created an autobiographical dance theater solo, MLCG (My Little China Girl), and a full-length dance theater piece, Body Through Which the Dream Flows, among others. Testing² is a natural evolution of her work and style, presenting the audience with familiar yet new and invigorating work.
Laura Peterson also approaches this piece from a background of extensive performance experience, focusing more specifically on dance. In the past, her work has centered around intersectionality as well, but more so the intersectionality between performance and the physical world. She has worked with “large scale paintings, 1000 sq ft of living lawn, 16ft tall paper sculptures, and other giant structures” as described on her personal website, allowing each visual piece to inform and inspire her performance. She allows her work to become reactionary and responsive to the world around her in this way, taking on the shape and pushing back against the environment that surrounds her. At the same time, her work engages with history and politics, reacting to the artistic and political movements that shaped the world in which she creates today. On her website, she explains that she continues to be especially influenced by modernism and the minimalist works of the 1960s and 1970s. As Peterson’s work continues to explore the relationship between the body, physical environment, identity, and history’s influence on today, the themes explored in Testing² present a natural fit into her artistic focus.
The Tank offers a welcoming home for this dance and theater piece, reflecting its mission of uplifting experimental works that dare to push past the boundaries of traditional performance. The Tank has long been recognized for its focus on emerging artists, breaking down economic barriers to grant opportunities to artists of various backgrounds and experiences. Since its founding in 2003, The Tank has evolved into a space that produces 1,000 shows every year of various genres. Much like the production of Testing² itself, The Tank strives to include a wide variety of mediums in its productions, including theatre, dance, film, comedy, music, and puppetry. In fact, the first line of The Tank’s mission statement describes its dedication to “contribut[ing] to a performing arts ecosystem.” As the theatre emphasizes the importance of this ecosystem, it also highlights the significance of the interreliance between mediums and how they feed into each other. This word implies the necessity of connection between artists as well, a value that directly reflects the work of Kim and Peterson in Testing².
In a recent interview with Soomi Kim, the performing artist and I discussed the beginning of the creative process for this piece and how it first came to be. Her primary inspiration for the piece involved the recordings of artists in the recording studio, most especially Art Garfunkel. These recordings not only involved the artist practicing and singing, but involved long rants and comments by the artist on how the recording session was going. Nobody was filtering him and nobody was stopping him; he simply spoke his mind. Upon hearing these clips, Kim thought to herself, “This should be a dance theatre piece.” The first iteration of the project, titled Testing Testing, was performed in 2014. Later on, after collaborating with an artist she had met through another project with whom she shared similar creative sensibilities, she created a twenty-minute version of the piece named Testing Redo. As Kim herself articulated, “Whatever you’re creating is going to come out different depending on who you’re working with.” As such, the piece has gone through many iterations before arriving at the version audiences will see in December. This version has a runtime of about fifty minutes to an hour, and it uses recordings that range from meltdowns to rants and from funny to toxic.
In discussing collaboration with Laura Peterson, Kim offered many insights into their process and dynamic. She described the studio in which they work together as a “healing space,” highlighting their freedom to creatively experiment and to treat the studio as an environment separate from the outside world. “We have to let go of whatever’s going on in our lives first,” Kim noted, emphasizing the importance of venting and releasing personal frustrations and stressors in the rehearsal space before getting to work. In this way, Kim and Peterson create an atmosphere that encourages them to “laugh and play” as they work and leads them to make rewarding discoveries together. This approach proves incredibly important for this theatre and dance piece specifically, as its combined form heavily relies on collaborative discovery. In regards to combining the two performance mediums of theatre and dance in one piece, Kim also offered many insightful reflections. “Everything you do informs the next thing,” she said. “I build as I go.” She explained that this performance art form relies on continuous trial and error and a willingness to deviate from the original script, allowing performers to explore how a message can best be communicated to their audience. This creative and flexible approach allowed Testing² to come to fruition in its current form.
When asked what she hopes the audience will take away from the piece, Kim emphasized that she hopes her observers escape their lives for an hour and have a good time. “When a piece lingers for a few days, you realize it had an effect on you,” she said. She also hopes that the audience will be inspired to continue supporting the performing arts, most especially dance and work that pushes the boundaries of what is expected. Performances for Testing² will begin on December 5, 2024 and will run until December 15, 2024. Get your tickets following this link!
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