2017
Hit Back is a sculptural and performance-based installation developed during Steady Pulse, a summer sessions residency at NY non-profit, Recess. During the session, the space at Recess was transformed into a club that played host to a diverse range of happenings and interventions. At the centre of the space was an architectural and sculptural dance floor which shifted appearance and function as a platform for the varied events.
Hit Back (one of these events) was a series of open dance rehearsals, in which the valences of the dance-floor's impact on the dancer's body were explored. In response to the mass shooting of the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL, June 12, 2016, a vocabulary of movements and gestures were developed to explore the social and political implications of the fallen body and the dance floor as a space for resistance. As rehearsals, the works were open-ended and evolved over the course of several weeks. As a movement vocabulary was developed through improvisation, collaboration and instruction from the artist, the dancers' agency and labour was highlighted. With each rehearsal the dancers were given agency to rearrange the sculptural elements of the space, and to select their own music for the rehearsal, allowing them to creating new conditions for their bodies to move with and resist against.
Images courtesy of Recess.
Modular dance floor designed in collaboration with NAKWORKS.
Performers: John Alix, Khadija Griffith & Oisín Monaghan. Uniforms by the Rational dress society. Photographer: Wendy Ploger.