Waves crashed on the sand and ambient beats wafted from the DJ tent. Rainbow flags marked a sacred circle on the beach: beyond the luxurious summer homes and expensive restaurants, a brave queer oasis for experimental art emerged.
Question everything. Laugh often. And be proud as peacocks, amoebas and hominids—you’re alive, and it’s June!
If performance is an intersection between the realness of live embodiment and the fantastical suspension of reality, then this is true performance.
I put my arms around the dry branches, sunk my face between the needles. I remembered holding you like this before you left. I remembered when we did this without thinking.
Paper. A tongue? A face? Hands, elbows, emerging body parts. Two bodies. Questions. Who are they to each other? Will they ever come out from behind the semi-translucent wall? Conceal and reveal. Discovery. Peekaboo, peep show, peeling back wrapping paper; pulling the curtain open in a stranger’s house to see a familiar smile.
A catalyst, a deep breath together, a gathering.
Fact and fiction, inseparable, blur and tease. Cut to disco ball, still swinging. Slow down and watch the air sparkle.
Created and performed by Holly Sass and Jonathan Matthews / BREAKTIME
And then, time reversed itself.
Black Dance Stories is exactly what it sounds like and precisely what we need right now. It’s a distillation of insightful moments in post-performance talkbacks spliced with casual conversations you once shared over drinks, plus powerful sentiments you’re overhearing now at BLM protests.
Black Dance Stories is exactly what it sounds like and precisely what we need right now. It’s a distillation of insightful moments in post-performance talkbacks spliced with casual conversations you once shared over drinks, plus powerful sentiments you’re overhearing now at BLM protests.
Re-examining the words these artists shared with me about the show on March 7, I was struck by the resonance of their work in the liminal fever dream that is our current reality. At this uncanny remove of time and location, the pieces swelled with meaning. The three soloists dealt with the limitations of their bodies, examining rituals and scores and diagnoses.