MAKING UNMAKING

A dance installation with 12 bodies at Glasshouse Arlifelab; performers shift states in constant evolution through group scores. Liminal states and negotiation become subject while flesh and time is reckoned with as incessantly reorganized matter. As the ensemble engages in the task of lifting one body for a long duration of time, the performance cycle restarts itself; space and time are marked by moments of living sculpture, which emerge from the dancers inhabiting complex improvisational systems. 

Choreography by Alex Romania in collaboration with Zoë Bennett, Ariana Cameron, JP Faienza, Meg Fry, Julie Goldberg, Amanda Hunt, George Russell, Lily Bo Shapiro, Emily Smith, produced and developed in part byThe Tinkers Project with Creative Producer & Designer - Katie Fleming, Associate Producer - Ross Pasquale.

This project has been made possible in part by a residency at SPACE on Ryder Farm, as well as by generous support from The Bellevue Literary Press and Paul Harding, with their permission to use the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers by Paul Harding in creative development of this project. 

'Making Unmaking', a shimmering landscape of bodies in an intimate setting, a meditative environment to consider the materiality of the body. Performers shift states, in constant evolution through task based group events. Appearing at first more sculptural than compositional, choreography is proposed as guiding principles of interaction, systems through which performers arrange their bodies and consciousness'. Through these structures, performers find themselves in cyclical action, incessantly pivoting relationship, composing their body's fleshy substance, group organisms negotiating resistance or release and the task of supporting an individual’s full body weight over lengthy periods of time. During this crossbreed of an event, dance, and endurance art, audience are invited to graze through the Glasshouse ArtLifeLab, encountering the performance at their discretion, at moments conversing with the performers, and if comfortable aiding with certain physical tasks. The performance is sequentially reversed two hours into the evening; audience are recommended to visit from 7-9pm for the conceptual making of the piece and/or 9-11pm for the conceptual unmaking of the piece. Attendance for the whole event, from 7pm-11pm, is encouraged but not required, lingering is welcome, sporadic viewing is acceptable. 

'Making Unmaking' began as a collaborative effort to devise performance and installation using the 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tinkers by Paul Harding as a conceptual starting place. In the Fall of 2012 Alex Romania, Katie Flemming and Amanda Hunt collaboratively wrote a proposal to Paul Harding and Erika Goldman (Publisher at the Bellevue Literary Press) to utilize Tinkers in creative development of an immersive production. In the Winter of 2013 the trio received permission to work with the novel for artistic purposes, and began to work under the name The Tinkers Project. Since, they have generated performance material with varying levels of focus on the novel, sometimes at the center of their process, operating as a scaffolding, and sometimes in the periphery, orbiting amongst the constellation of influences on their work. 

'MAKING UNMAKING' is its own work in an of itself, as well as a phase building towards a larger work. Over the course of the Summer and Fall of 2014, the Tinkers Project will continue to develop this and other performance material in site specific and immersive contexts. They will produce two more developmental showings over the course of the next year (another in a Gallery in NYC, and one in a reclaimed property in Massachusetts) after which, they plan to merge the works, culminating in the run of an immersive performance within a fully designed free-standing house in Brooklyn sometime in the Spring of 2015. 

In its current form, Making Unmaking is a synthesis of material led primarily by Alex Romania’s research with the novel Tinkers; Making Unmaking follows a handful of various interests that have emerged through The Tinkers Project work together. Throughout the process there have been many artists, who have contributed significantly to the work, without which this project would not be what it is.