GO investigates the ecological entanglement of self, other, and environment. A dancer travels through city, sensing, feeling and responding in action and interaction to the social and physical landscape. GO is a solo for a small mobile audience. For Coda we propose to have three simultaneous solos taking place along three intertwining trajectories. This work invites transformation from spectatorship to active “audiencing” as we play with how we perceive ourselves, others and our surroundings, both consciously and unconsciously. 

GO Bieringa crescent

In this practice performers are working with their kinesthetic response to what is entering their body through their senses. From a developmental perspective our senses of movement and touch evolve early, all over our body and together create a foundation for all of our other senses, our capacity to taste, smell, hear and see. Our skin and our nervous system develop from the same embryological tissue. The skin acts as an interface, a permeable membrane, between our bodies and the world, our thoughts and our physical existence. In GO by rubbing up against the city we define ourselves to ourselves.  Through touch and movement we make sense of what we taste, smell, hear and see. We each define the city and are defined by it. As we move through it we are literally leaving traces of ourselves, our own skin, across it. We are simultaneously touching and being touched. We are moving and being moved.

GO audience score:

As the performance begins you are invited to follow the performer of your choice, changing to another performer at any time. Shift your perspective. Follow your curiosity. Give the performer space and watch from a distance. Sometimes come close for a more intimate experience. Please follow social distancing guidelines. Track sensation in your body.  Have a great walk.

Questions on negotiating the social landscape: How can two strangers from different cultures/classes share this non verbal moment in time and space? How do I engage you in a physical dialogue? Do we have time to find a breath together, a glance, a physical call and response? Can I read the space in between us fast enough to give you more space so I don’t frighten you away or do I need to come closer, offer a physical challenge, ask you the time, invite you to join me for a dance? How have our months of home quarantine and social distancing impacted our capacity to read space? Our capacity to connect with strangers? Our capacity to breath in close proximity? Our capacity to feel ourselves as the embodied sensory physical beings we are?

The work generates embodied experiences, images, and sounds traces throughout the cityscape in the minds and bodies of the cities inhabitants and our audiences.

a film version of GO from Minneapolis

Performances

2019

Solo version performed as part of SAMMENomGATA’s TOGETHERING, Schous Plass, Oslo

2009

Stromereien Festival, Zurich, Switzerland, August 2 & 3
Performed with three simultaneous solos taking place along three intertwining trajectories with Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad, and Kristin Van Loon
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, Kuopio, Finland, September 25 & 26
Performed with three simultaneous solos taking place along three intertwining trajectories with Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad, and Pia Lindy (Fi)
Dance in the City presented by Mad Productions, Helsinki, October 1 & 2
Performed with two simultaneous solos taking place along three intertwining trajectories with Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad

2007

Presented by Gare Theater in  Belleville and Vitry, Paris with a guest appearance by Otto Ramstad

2006

Downtown Brooklyn
Seattle’s university district
Presented by Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Art
Film version of entitled Nicollet Avenue (2007) and featuring guest sound artist Bryce Beverlin II

2005

Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis