Choreography: EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, in collaboration with Gyrchel Moore.
Performance: Gyrchel Moore and EmmaGrace Skove-Epes with bottles, jars, water, light, projection
Sound: "Faith's Hymn" by A Beautiful Chorus, with live accompaniment by Gyrchel Moore and EmmaGrace Skove-Epes
~This piece was made while reading Sarah Ahmed's "Queer Phenomenology", Gloria Anzaldua's "Light in the Dark", and Theresa Hak Kyeung Cha's "dictee"~
Performed at Theater for the New City in April 2017 and at Roulette Intermedium as a part of Dance Roulette in February 2017. Another iteration of this work will be performed at Work Up 4.0 at Gibney Dance in March 2018.
Photo credit: Scott Shaw and Orion Gordon
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A note:
There is a desire to listen to the particular resonance of an unfamiliar but familiar space, to hear how static sounds and friction feel different at different times of day. There is an attempt to listen to the space that folds around us and seeps into us, as we search for what kind and quality we want to take up, how we want to meet the space with our buzzing skin.
Where is the physical mark of our dreampt sensations, of the replayed memory overlayed with something new? Where does the invisible but tangibly felt, leak- seep out and stain? How does the physical impact of our personal and collaborative imaginings reflect in the spaces that house them? How does the air change in thickness, in temperature, in texture, when we dig and carve lines into it, project onto and through it? How does the air we've changed, and that many before us have changed, impress back upon us, dig back into us? We activate the space between us, and it activates us. The pace of my breath and fluids finds the pace of yours. The weight of my bones and muscle shift when you speak to me. My eyes are touched by what I see, my eyes touch what I see. Your ears touch and are touched through listening, skin too. Our breaths meet somewhere beyond us, quietly. Are these meeting grounds, these touches- portals/ghosts/ quiet spells cast?
The work, thank goodness, is in process- it's not fixed, it's still finding what it is, what kind and quality of space it wants to take up. We are finding who we are within it, moment by moment, day by day. These days it feels like a week passes in a day's time, a day's time in a moment's. There is so much to do, our personal and collective efforts and fights continue and continue and continue.
This work is an attempt to slow down, to listen- to ourselves, to each other, to the space that we inhabit and that folds around us, that seeps into us. It is an attempt to not know, even as we practice repeating familiar cycles. It is an attempt to trust in not knowing, as unsettling as it can be, so that we can listen for, breathe into, and seek guidance in the difference of the buzzing of our skin from this moment to the next, the warmth or cool of the air above our skin, the textures and sounds that fold themselves into our ears and skin, that imprint on our nervous systems, that weave themselves into our memories, our imaginations.
I'm not sure what this work will/did/will continue to amount to- it feels slippery though, hard to hold. I do know that it is trying to take cues from the recent lunar eclipse, from the tides, from different spaces, sounds, actions, and questions shared over years of friendship and collaboration. I do know that the work will continue to shift as we shift, as the moon shifts, and as the days and moments shift, and that these shifts will carve themselves into us. We will try to listen to and for them, to welcome them, to be malleable and soft.
