The Door’s Unlocked
Anna, Darrin, David, Eleanor, jess, Katie, Leslie & Weena:
This gallery event was an immersive, multi-platformed, week-long event with daily rotating performances, hybrid viewing-doing sessions, and other activated public engagements. The dances, the dancers, the actions, the contents of the work shifted day and night for 7 days.
Foley Gallery 59 Orchard Street, NYC 10002
February 3rd-9th, 2020, daily
The Door’s Unlocked was developed during creative residencies at Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, New York and The Marble House Project in Dorset, Vermont and with creative producing by Remi Harris.
program notes: This is not a dance piece. This is a conjuring inside a temporariness. This is connecting the dancers with the dance. This is a negotiation of our togetherness. This is entering the unknown without demanding to know. This is Anna Witenberg, Darrin Wright, David Thomson, Eleanor Smith, jess pretty, Katie Workum, Leslie Cuyjet & Weena Pauly and what happens within a multi-year, ritualized gathering of moving, practicing, conversing, eating and making improvised dances again and again and again. It’s in the action, the ritual, the body, the form, the fantasy, the frequency, the space, the shape, the desire, the flow, the memory, the place, the passion, the reach, the imagination, the time, the fluidness, the sameness, the emptying out, the chaos, the chance, the landscape and the returning. Through these kaleidoscoping lenses we reflect our jointed worlds to cultivate meaning and to create new pathways and questions for moving and living in this chaotic world today.
Daily activations include self portraits featuring solo investigations of each company member, open public conversations, self guided public practice offerings, and evenings to witness open Authentic Movement sessions and improvised performances.
This project came about from a desire from the company to allow for expanded entry points for both observers and movers to engage with the year long “house” we have created. This house is a melding of the ritualized practice of Authentic Movement (an expressive improvisational movement practice that allows a group of participants a type of free association of the body,) improvisational dances, and the cultivation of a new culture in which today’s contemporary dance artists can thrive. By designing a format of multiplicity in engagement, the intention and purpose shifts. The work then challenges traditional hierarchies of placing the highest value upon a cumulative product and instead offers testimony to both the inescapable-ness of change itself and dance’s greatest value: the dancers themselves. Here are 8 artists with vast skill, performance histories and knowledge, capable of endless creation given a real supportive space for risk and trust. We proclaim the form of dance is a human form, where the artists are the art.
PUBLIC PRACTICE is a shared public space for witnessing and moving for and with each other. It’s based in Authentic Movement, a doing and witnessing kinetic, eyes-closed experience. Let’s develop a different system to see, feel and do. Closing the eyes, we can let our other senses tell us something. Let’s listen to the invisible systems operating within and around us. Let's let ourselves be seen without returning or controlling the gaze. Let's let go of controlling our visual appearance and allow a space to peek into the mystery that is also you. Here, you the mover become both the generator and the object. Out the window is this elusive concept of mastery to allow room for work, effort and everyone’s creative capacity.
ROUND TABLE CONVERSATIONS. Using our practice as a starting point, company members lead conversations from their personal vantages. MONDAY: Leslie Cuyjet and Darrin Wright host We Hate Talking/but We Love You. The two will interview and interweave their 20 year friendship and dancing histories and secret expertises. TUESDAY: David Thomson hosts Performance and the Role of the Spectator/Witness. WEDNESDAY: Eleanor Smith and Anna Witenberg host We are Lost: a series of questions and problems regarding the state of being. In this conversation, Anna and Eleanor share a list of their own personal queries responding to living in a female body, being a freelance dancer and dance maker, sexuality, form, and the ritual of practicing authentic movement. THURSDAY:jess pretty on world building, pleasure seeking and the queering of time. inside the threads of authentic movement. FRIDAY: Weena Pauly hosts What is Somatic Experiencing? How can we frame our creative experience of Authentic Movement through the nervous system and the body’s responses to survival.
AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT is the backbone of our work. It is a ritualized closed eyed movement and witnessing exchange that we do each rehearsal. Holding value in both the visual and invisible work, you are welcome to come and witness each session.
SELF PORTRAITS Each night a member with build and be their own improvised self portrait, capturing themselves at that moment in time. Performer chosen right before performance each night.
COMPANY PIECE. Each night offers a different improvised score. Stay for an intimate conversation with the company.
