Program Information
Convergence: A merging; coming together; junction; a joining.
This dance double-bill includes a world-premiere of Blue Orbit by GWDC and GAPE by Tia Kushniruk and Susannah Haight.
About Blue Orbit
Blue Orbit offers a landscape in which everything can be seen, and nothing is hidden. All aspects of the performance are of shared value. Moments of stillness and listening alongside dynamic expressions of movement and sound. Specific physical tasks such as loops, spinning, reorienting and orbiting highlight in the performers their fullest range from the most expansive to the minute.
Objects are animated and bodies explore mechanics. Dancers create rhythm and sound, objects move. Roles and edges are blurred, and one thing fades into the other.
An installation of found objects designed by erψn temp3st fills the space and the performers move through the scenography as it sounds and shifts. The work passes from one state to another leaving us to wonder where one thing ends and another begins.
Choreographer Molly McDermott
Sound Designer erψn temp3st
Performers Alida Kendell, Alison Kause, erψn temp3st
Dramaturg Lin Snelling
Lighting Designer Dorrie Deutschendorf
Costumer Tamara Bliss
About GAPE
Tia Ashley Kushniruk (亚 女弟) and Susannah Haight perform in a new work: “We’re working with the figure of the Virgin Mary as an entry point into exploring the “sacred feminine construct” and how female iconography in religious contexts has been used to define, restrict, and idealize women.
We’re interested in what happens when that image fractures, when she is pushed into spaces that are unruly, excessive, or even monstrous. We’re drawing from horror cinema, films like Possession (Dir: Andrzej Żuławski) and Titaine (Dir: Julia Ducournau) and body horror, as a way to destabilize these traditional narratives. I’m bringing my background in set design and tableau vivant, and Tia is bringing her Bouffon practice, so the work blends satire, distortion, and image-making in equal measure.
We’re also looking to writers like Lauren Elkin and her book Art Monsters as a theoretical lens, thinking about how monstrosity can become a form of liberation. The work is about breaking open inherited images of the feminine, and imagining them as complex, unstable, and full of agency.”
Co-Creators Tia Kushniruk and Susannah Haight
Lighting Designer Darren Shaen
CONVERGENCE Production Team
Technical Director Judah Truong
Producers Mac Brock, Deviani Andrea
Access Coordinator Carly Neis
Deaf Consultant Thurga Kanagasekarampillai
ASL Interpreters Gail Benin, Jenny Stevens
Technical Staff Emilia Fox Hillyer, Ryan Hemphill, Frances Girard
