Loess, performances 4+5

gliding hills

The third weekend of Loess performances was pretty maximalist: dancers Michael Schumacher (Amsterdam + Clarkston), Mary Margaret Moore (Seattle) and Ben Goosman (NYC) joined the local cast, along with members of the UI Dance Ensemble, six young performers from my Animal Dances class (more on them soon), our second and largest wet felting and full houses.

Both evenings began with moving hills. Our first audience arrived to a 16’ embroidered burlap hill filling the central gallery. Five of us pushed this up the main wall (aided by pulleys) to begin the performance, where it became a billowing, bulging sculpture that an audience member likened to an on-coming dust storm. The second night the gallery floor was covered with clusters of small hills that rested, glided or wiggled among each other, guided by child performers inside.

Hannah Turner, Mary Margaret Moore, Corrie Befort, Michael Schumacher, Ben Goosman, Deena Goodgold, Wallace Becker and wet felt ensemble members. Photos by August Frank, Jonah Radeke and Megan Mack

Being increasingly cavalier with this fabricated landscape - playing out the malleability and unreliability of it. In an earlier performance we unceremoniously pulled what had been a rather lovely grove of hanging trees down from the ceiling. During the interview for this nice write-up, writer Mary Stone said she found some of the forms and objects distinctly “unsettling.” Had fun talking together about these variations in Loess, and the larger Unnamed Shapes project: unsettlingly familiar, scary unsettling, physically dislocating or relocating, unsettling through association. Satisfying that these arise.

Satisfying too to have the Iris Dance materials increasingly shape the space, objects and choices. Mary Margaret’s material brought circles, rays, crop lines, the weighted rings of the hills and weighted limbs of exhausted action. Ben’s shimmering, tasseling, wind and air-filled material had pre-built echoes. I loved the young dancers too; rolling and rolling and rolling together, pouncing, leaping. Duet of Mary Margaret and myself captured by Eliseo Ortiz, the gorgeous music by Jason E Anderson:

Have had a weird illness since February that only recently resolved so it is kind of a miracle this has all been coming together. So grateful to my sister Bindy for showing up, helping out, and putting up with me. Also to long-time collaborator and friend Beth Graczyk coming from NYC to see performances, talk over ideas, ask good questions. My logbook posts have been delayed too - need to be mostly building and dancing these days.