Nacre Voit (mother-of-pearl sees) (2004)
The Reading Room (2004)
At the invitation of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, The Seldoms developed and presented Nacre Voit (mother-of-pearl sees), a site-specific work performed in the Chicago Cultural Center's historic Preston Bradley Hall. Nacre Voit creates a dialogue between architecture and dance. Recognizing that the two art forms share the same basic properties - space, shape, time, flow, weight - the artists explored the formal and poetic associations of a body's movement and its location. Nacre Voit pays homage to the unique and historic space that was once the reading room of Chicago's first public library and currently houses one of the world's largest Tiffany domes.
Several text sources were inspiration for Nacre Voit: The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges and The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes. Music sources for Nacre Voit are Banteay Srey by Carl Stone, The Anvil Chorus by David Lang, and Oracle by John Zorn. The Tourist Song is based on Father's James Song, a 19th Century Shaker tune.
The Reading Room (2004)
Nacre Voit (mother-of-pearl sees) was remounted in the fall of 2004, as The Reading Room at Architectural Artifacts in Chicago. Originally designed for a Beaux Arts space with a rotunda, arches, stained glass dome and shimmering mosaics, Nacre Voit was a softer, circular dance. This version lost its emotional focus and impact against Architectural Artifacts' lines, corners and hard edges. The work was distilled down to the level of essential images and presented in three sharply designated spaces in the atrium. Much like the fragments of history in Architectural Artifacts, The Reading Room became a piece about the memory of a space and a memory of a dance. Video choreographer Michael Cole blurred and fragmented video footage from Nacre Voit into a dizzying whirl of color and motion, projected in openings into the atrium above the dancers. The audience had a unique, distant vantage point from high above by watching the piece from second and third story balconies and catwalks.
Credits
- Choreography by Carrie Hanson
- Direction and additional choreography by Susan Hoffman, Doug Stapleton and the performers
- Performed by Michelle Blakely, Elizabeth Chang, Charlie Cutler, Christina Gonzalez-Gillett, Jen Grisham, Julieann Graham, Carrie Hanson, Susan Hoffman, Jules Hopkins, Kevin Newhall, Doug Stapleton
- Costumes by Lara Miller