Banner Cycle (2016-2018)

SOAIDNS [Person Search Detail] (Sweet Inferno, February 2018) Image description: a Werther’s Original butterscotch candy altar. Simone and Melisande support Kiera’s weight on their forearms and knees after the audience covers them all in Werther’s Original butterscotch candies, which begin to slide off them as Kiera slides off Simone and Melisande’s backs. Photo credit: Melissa West

SAAACKL [Admission Application/Checklist Summary] (Small Plates Dance Festival, March 2018) Image description: Laura supports Kiera’s weight through their hands and knees on a wooden floor as Kiera is draped prone over Laura’s back. Photo credit: Marianne Killackey

SFAREGQ [Registration Query Form] (Triskelion Arts, December 2018) Image description: a Southern Italian scarf and an Irish scarf with Book of Kells illustrations on it drape the floor and hold a plate and bag of chocolate chip cookies and yellow rubber dish gloves. Ella tilts to her right, standing on her right leg with her left leg extended to the left, looking toward her laptop on the black marley floor. Melisande sits on the floor with bent knees and palms on the floor behind her, and Kiera stands on one leg and plays accordion behind Melisande. Photo credit: Elyse Mertz

Taking its name from the student information system (Banner) that The New School used when I worked there as an admission counselor, this cycle involved eight distinct but connected public performances and collaborative movement and sound practices running through/around them with Melisande Echanique, Laura Harris Farrell, Zoey Hart, Simone Johnson, Angelina Marriott, and Ella Dawn W-S. Sitting squarely in the ever-shifting relational space of admission processes (submitting, accepting, rejecting), chronic gastrointestinal illness (shared diasporic cooking practices, eating, glitching, bleeding, disabled waste processes, composting), and performance practices (subject/object interaction and blurring, assimilation and resistance, being perceived while perceiving, embodied archives spilling into one another), I approached this performance/admission dyad as a digestive dance: who consumes and who is consumed? What possibilities might emerge from stewing in our bodily archives of subject/object interaction as performances of digestive admission processes?

Public Performances:

  • SAADCRV: LUNA® Bar (Chez Bushwick works-in-progress showing, June 2017), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Angelina Marriott

  • SAADCRV: Jerky (Silent Barn, Summer-Fall 2017), solo performance installation in the south garage

  • SAADCRV: Margherita Pie and Peaches in collaboration with Simone Johnson and Angelina Marriott (New Women Space, as part of Trash Capsules: Archives of Food, Illness, and Diaspora, co-curated with Alexander Enzo Hope, August 2017)

  • Source/Background Institution Query-Only [SOISBGI] (Green Space, November 2017), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Laura Harris Farrell

  • SOAIDEN [Person Search] (The Owl Music Parlor, February 2018), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Melisande Echanique and Simone Johnson

  • SOAIDNS [Person Search Detail] (Sweet Inferno, February 2018), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Melisande Echanique and Simone Johnson

  • SAAACKL [Admission Application/Checklist Summary] (Small Plates Choreography Festival, March 2018), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Melisande Echanique, Laura Harris Farrell, and Simone Johnson

  • SFAREGQ [Registration Query Form] (Triskelion Arts, December 2018), choreographed and performed in collaboration with Melisande Echanique and Ella Dawn W-S