RockCitizen

Event Type
Performance
Event Description

A new dance theater piece created and directed by Carrie Hanson, The Chicago Tribune's 2015 "Chicagoan of the Year in Dance".

To rock. Rock music, to be sure. But also, more broadly: to agitate, upset, oppose, resist. The Seldoms' new work RockCitizen presents an immersive sonic, visual, and kinetic environment that recalls countercultural spaces of the 1960s and connects them to a larger history of people pursuing breakthroughs and transformations in their lives and worlds. A companion piece to the acclaimed Power Goes, RockCitizen looks at 1960s social movements that rode waves of protest, experimentation, hedonism, and dissonance in efforts to remake what it means to be an individual and a community, a citizen, and part of—or sometimes outside, or sometimes even outright against—a civic body. Dance and dialogue unfold under the "Brascape," a spectacular, mobile net of 216 colored bras. With references to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters's Acid Tests, rock icons such as Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix, and political figures such as Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, Students for a Democratic Society, civil rights intellectual and novelist James Baldwin, and activists in women’s and gay liberation movements, RockCitizen brings together a multidisciplinary group of artists to advance The Seldoms' project of using dance theater for social inquiry.

The Team
Artistic Director Carrie Hanson and The Seldoms are joined in this project - the companion piece to Power Goes - by the same acclaimed artistic team, who deliver an expansive,
layered and daring exploration of what it means to rock the system: playwright Stuart Flack, visual artist Bob Faust, sound artist Mikhail Fiksel, lighting designer Julie Ballard, video artist Liviu Pasare, historian Michael J. Kramer, Assistant Director Christina Gonzalez-Gillet, guest performer, actor Brian Shaw, and the ensemble - Philip Elson, Sarah Gonsiorowski, Damon Green, Matthew McMunn, Cara Sabin, and TJ Stallworth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dance Styles
Modern / Contemporary