The Other Side Of Stillness | Installation
The Other Side of Stillness | Installation
you are the pivot point
we are the dance
the dancers get tired, they rest, but the dance goes on
The Other Side of Stillness | Installation is more than a documentation of a live performance. Performed live, it is a collaboratively created, site-specific, 2-hour durational duet for five or more dancers that never stops moving. In brightly colored jumpsuits and Power accessories, one member of a duet is replaced after 15 minutes of continuous dancing. At 15 minute intervals, a new dancer enacts the ritual of replacement, and the dance goes on. This highly physical score utilizes and celebrates the performers’ collective history while exploring endurance, replacement and constancy amidst an ever-shifting environment of spectator, site and time.
In December 2014, The Modern Dancers of America practiced the piece in Wonder Valley, CA for the camera. This installation combines the rigor of our practice with the ancient / future landscape of Wonder Valley, stark portraits of the dancers entering or exiting a performance state, and dynamic digital and acoustic soundscapes.
The piece has been performed in public spaces, private studio and theatrical spaces, for the camera, and in intermediate spaces where performance and spectatorship mingle loosely. Each adaptation thoughtfully engages with each context, its challenges, limitations and wonders. With each adaptation, the piece sprouts new layers and plays with loosening or tightening the 15 minute replacement, 2-hour durational frame work.
We are the Modern Dancers of America. We recognize the roots of our collective movement material: Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown, Michael Jackson, Bob Fosse, Bill T. Jones, surface through our dancing, reminding us that we are cellularly engaged with a folk form that our bodies pay regular homage to, while simultaneously innovating.
Concept, Direction, Editing: Alexx Shilling
Director of Photography: Taso Papadakis
Original Sound: Jesse Neuman
Brought to life by the Modern Dancers of America:
Barry Brannum
Alison D’Amato
Sarah Leddy
Laurel Jenkins
Madison Page
Gwynn Shanks
Alexx Shilling
Devika Wickremesinghe
PERFORMANCE ENGAGEMENTS:
Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center, Lioncoln Center
Dance on Camera Festival, February 2016
Artist Talk at the Annenberg Beach House, Santa Monica, CA
October 13, 2015
Anita’s Way Times Square, New York, NY
September 21 – 24, 2015