The Seldoms will present first segments of a new work by Artistic Director Carrie Hanson inspired by author (and The Seldoms’ dramaturg) Michael J. Kramer’s book, The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture. These early explorations will consider questions of how rock music, at its powerful beginnings in the sixties (and how does it now) operated to both unify a populace but also agitate dissent; to flatten difference but also to provoke new expression (in a sort of recurring play between formula and novelty); to incite social criticism and questioning but also perpetuate modes of passive consumer-citizenship? In collaboration with Kramer, The Seldoms’ long-running ensemble (Christina Gonzalez-Gillett, Philip Elson, Damon Green, Amanda McAlister, Javier Marchan Ramos) and sound designer Mikhail Fiksel and visual artist Bob Faust.
Peter Carpenter Performance Project will premiere Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times #12: Dominant Collapse. Drawing on relationships between trauma and resilience as the basis for movement development, Carpenter develops a vocabulary that explores the body’s supple responses to forces such as gravity, torque and another body’s velocity. Developing metaphors on psychic and civic scales, Carpenter will engage a seasoned trio of dancers—Margi Cole, Lisa Gonzales, and Matt McMunn—to articulate tensions between suppleness and strength. Dominant Collapse continues Carpenter’s ongoing cycle of dances under the umbrella title, Rituals of Abundance for Lean Times, which works to debunk prevailing myths of scarcity that permeate our public sphere.
