Inside Look at LAVA Loving & Daring at Dixon Place!

Sarah Johnson, the Artistic Director of LAVA talks about putting together the past, present and future to make LAVA Loving & Daring which will be premiering at Dixon Place on June 3rd, 2010:

On January 3rd 2010 we began rehearsing LAVA Loving & Daring at our Brooklyn studio.  On June 3rd 2010 we will begin performing LAVA Loving & Daring at Dixon Place.  LAVA is celebrating 10 years by creating a show that has highlighted, remixed, and revived some of our and our audiences' favorite material from the past decade.  It has  been really interesting to look at all of our past work and to try to assess what has withstood the test of time. 

We are including many of our most acrobatic and virtuosic pieces:  double trapeze, human pyramids, hoop diving and team tumbling.  All are done by a cast of women who are amazingly strong and synchronized, some new to the company, some veterans with 10 years under their belts.  Also a good dose of geology and earth sciences with duets inspired by volcanoes and plate tectonics, a semi-accurate geology lecture that involves audience participation, swing dancing that combines with wrestling to point to the complexity and humor of socially-dictated gender roles, and a section from Tides inspired by the sounds and rhythms of ocean waves.  We will be showing some of our site-specific video collaborations with Nancy Brooks Brody from residencies that we did in California, Hawaii, and New York. And a parade of props that refer to the heroics and inanities of scientific knowledge.  

I am hoping that audiences will get to see the unusual combination of aesthetics, politics, and physicality that is unique to LAVA:  our feminist resistance embodied in female strength and intimate relationships, our connection to the natural world, our movement vocabulary that spans from the virtuosity of acrobatics to the simplicity of pedestrian movements that anyone could do, and our commitment to a humanity and accessibility in our connections with each other, our community members, and our audiences.  


Get a preview of the show here.