galithea

At a point where the tundra meets the forest and the desert meets the sea, we find two individuals desperate to share common ground; beautifully broken, and attempting to weather their own storm.

The piece is a duet choreographed by Annie Rigney to the music of David Bruce and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project, and performed by Georgia Usborne and Jason Reese Cianciulli.

In the research for this work we explored an ecological phenomenon known as the Edge Effect, wherein two distinct landscapes or habitats meet and interact, producing a third, unique, and other-worldly ecosystem. This concept is explored in the meeting, melding, and colliding of the dancer's bodies and is also felt and experienced in the music; in which Cristina Pato of the Silk Road Ensemble plays her Galician Bagpipes-a cultural manifestation of the creative collision of the Spanish traditions with the Celtic ones, which visited the Iberian Peninsula and Spain in Antiquity. I feel that the concept of the Edge effect is particularly relevant to this moment because it infers that diversity breads creativity and that it is our differences melding which make us more powerful. The process for this duet, asked questions about ecology and scientific principles and then translated them into an expressive work about two individuals. It was from the abstract that the personal and deeply human emerged. 

Ultimately, what I hope comes across in the work, is a real sense of humanity; that a narrative emerges out of the sheer physics and quality of the movements developed, and that this physicality might be enough to tell a story and move an audience. How does texture, the bio-mechanics of movement and momentum elicit an emotional response?