45-min. loop
Premiere:
American Dance Festival, July 2011
Choreography & Direction:
Danielle Russo
Performance:
Janice Lancaster Larsen
Lauren Muraski
Danielle Russo
ChristinaNoel Reaves
Set Design:
Danielle Russo
Film:
Dana Ruttenberg
Photography:
Corey Melton
Technical Aspects:
450,000 white roses [genuine + artificial]
4 heat lamps
2 parlor chairs
2 liters of rose water
+ discarded flower stems via local partners
THAT ONE SHOULD OPEN LIKE AN EYELID AND LYING THERE BENEATH IT SIMPLY EYELIDS
2-ROOM SENSORIUM FOR A DURATIONAL DUET WITH 2 WOMYN PERFORMERS ENDURING A SWAMP OF 450,000 WHITE ROSES
Research is tied to the temporality of the rose as symbolic of the durational body coupled with popularly imposed tropes of Womyn and Womyn to Womyn relationships. Dissensions of object and objectification, utility, and worth are explored through metaphorical moments, such as the feeding, hoarding, sweeping, shedding, and burying of bodies beneath the dually sanctified and desecrated petals. The desire to control, to relinquish, and to transcend tethers the Womyn together.
FROM THE INSIDE: Audiences are invited into two tactile parlor rooms: one presented as a carefully organized labyrinth of discarded stems, potent with their green leaf volatiles, signaling pollination; and the second as a hyperbolic, overflowing pool of roses and their fragments, encased in smog and searing in temperature.
FROM THE OUTSIDE: Passerbys are confronted with the tireless performance of Womyn, but behind a glass facade, which in turn posits them as the very subjects of our study, dependent on their decisions to engage in acts of voyeurism or snap their own ‘takeaways’ for consumption. Past iterations of the exterior format included storefront windows, museum galleries, and residential enclosures with windowed parlor doors.
Click on thumbnails to enlarge or scroll top gallery
Photographs by Corey Melton