A Handful of Dust at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum

Right on the heels of Watermill residency I went off to Santa Barbara to create a new piece for the Contemporary Arts Forum (recently renamed the Museum of Contemporary Arts). Curator Heather Jeno Silva invited me to create a performance for the CAF galleries, in response to the current exhibition, A Handful of Dust. Dancer Mickey Mahar came with me, and we created a 30-minute piece in 2 days, based on some sketches that we started at Watermill. While this piece is separate from Fall of the Rebel Angels, it feels very much informed by this research, and will inevitably influence Rebel Angels going forward. You can hear some of Adam Bach’s original score in the video below (sandwiched between Phil Phillips and Soulwax).

The piece started with a list of ingredients, something I had not tried before, but came out of the the necessity of needing to make something very quickly. From my notebook on the plane:

At least one moment of extreme physicality. One moment of virtuosity, one moment of hilarity (we get actual laughs). One moment of musicality (of actual choreography to music). One fancy lighting trick. A moment where the audience falls asleep. Some suffering, and a reward. We always know what to do, especially in moments of extreme unknowability. A moment when they want to dance with us. Some awkward sexy moment, that’s genuine at the same time. Whoever we are, we must change over time. Become more of ourselves, less of ourselves, become larger than life (giant shadows) and smaller than loose change (lost and scattered on the ground beneath peoples’ feet). We are alone and together. We are professionals. We are entertainers.

I’d like to think that the exercise made things clearer. We performed the piece on March 7 2013, and here are some photos from the show by Robert Redfield:redfieldpictures.com