Odd Fellow (2006)
Odd Fellow is a work about the actions and velocity of a body that wakens to a Call. The Call, in this case, is interpreted from writings about the revivals from the period of American history called the Second Great Awakening--a time of unprecedented and inventive religious fervor in the United States.
In developing this piece, we laid out questions for investigation in the studio and on the page. How does the body move and respond to an awakening of spirit? What constituted visions and how are they transmitted and dispersed across a group of individuals? How reliable are the visions as they are passed down? How do groups distinguish and separate themselves in this new state of awareness?
This led to research into the nature of revivals, communitarian societies and the history of westward expansion in the 19th Century. As part of this research we were fortunate to acquire robes and paraphernalia from an Independent Order of the Odd Fellows lodge out of North Dakota; which added a visual and material element of ceremony to this piece. Finally, the mythic draw of the Frontier and westward expansion cropped up over and again, adding its own narrative weight to the material.
This is less a history lesson than our own myth making, an invented period of special enthusiasm that propels the believer into a new frontier of the imagination.
Credits
- Choreography and direction by Carrie Hanson
- Text and direction by Peter Carpenter & Doug Stapleton
- With additional movement ideas from the company
- Costume by Lara Miller & Carrie Hanson with original Oddfellows robes
- Lighting design by Margaret Nelson
- Music: Animal Magnetism, Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings
- Performance by Rachel Bunting, Peter Carpenter, Charlie Cutler, Christina Gonzalez-Gillett, Jen Grisham, Carrie Hanson, Brian Robert Hinkle, Doug Stapleton