About

The work repurposes and modulates four separate duets (2 made by us and 2 others made by Todd Eckert & Nol Simonse) so that they overlap, intertwine, and weave together throughout the gallery. Drawing on our history of professionally dancing and training together in San Francisco, where we actively exchanged performance and interpretation strategies, pedagogical development, choreographic inquiry, and creative dialogue, the evening will repurpose concepts, phrases, points of initiation, and creative resources used in these duets that explore intimacy and inter-relationality.

The first duet, small tyrannies,  is a premiere by project agora that explores technology’s control over human to human relationships. The second duet, Convers(at)ions, by Davis and Kohlmyer, explores the tension inside physical and verbal communication, the human need to be understood, the differences that often surface during the act of translation, and the strange urge to destroy that which you love most. The third duet, First Stab at Closure, choreographed by Todd Eckert, examines the interplay of intimacy and antagonism between people as they share weight. First Stab at Closure received an Isadora Duncan Bay Area Dance Award for outstanding performance by ensemble dancers Crystaldawn Bell and Norma Fong. The next duet, Dream Dressed As a Husband, created and performed by Nol Simonse with Randee Paufve is based on the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone, and uses this legend to underscore intimacy, denial, acceptance of death, transformation, and togetherness as prompts for dancing.

Ian Winters will create a visual landscape throughout the gallery that at times guides the audience from one space to the other.  How does a viewer's orientation to a work shift once they are given permission to deliberately appropriate and play with the building blocks that initiated the work? Does a work's essence remain when its central ideas are filtered through another's creative impulses? What ways does dance's ephemeral nature have weight and impact?

We’ve also asked 8 other dancers to join us. These eight dancers have been a significant part of our creative and performed histories. These eight other dancers will be performers and watchers, using improvisational structures and written text to engage the audience as they traverse the space.