Cities of the Interior (2020-2021)

BODY / MEMORY

Performance, Super 8 film, Photographic Prints

The performance for Galerie Camille evolved in relation to my project excavating the room, sparked by a reoccurring dream about searching for home within palaces of ancestral memory. Propelled by the desire for intimacy during the pandemic's Shelter-In-Place's structures of isolation, I reached out to friends, artists, and collaborators around the country and world, inviting them to share a window into their dreamscape. Many stories, poems, dances, drawings, and texts were shared, creating a dream archive of this time. This dance, which I'm calling Cities of the Interior (after Anais Nin's novel sequence, one of my favorite books as a teenager) relates to these fragments while inviting performers Christopher Woolfolk and Shannon White to consider their own dream-world-making and somnambulist practices. The three of us work with large folds of fabric, designed in collaboration with Julio Efrain Dominguez, which acts as a dermal layer to augment our bodies and connect us to each other and the space. The dance is about catharsis and togetherness, choreographically invested in physical states emerging from rocking, shaking and spinning. Inspired by Leni Sinclair and the film-based photo exhibition of Come Together, a Super 8 film will also be installed in the gallery, a collection of moments from Cities of the Interior.

June 28-30, 2022 at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NYC

January 29-February 27, 2021: Live socially distanced, limited audience performances on Saturday afternoons (run time approx. 45 mins) at Galerie Camille, Detroit

Choreography: Biba Bell

Performers: Biba Bell, Shannon White, Christopher Woolfolk; Textile: Julio Efrain Dominguez; Film assistance: Nicola Kuperus