Again The Wolves

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Past Showings of Again The Wolves

October 10, 2020 at 4:00 pm
Outdoor Rooftop Performance
Presented by XØ Projects Inc in association with Marble House Project
An outdoor performance on the roof of The Old American Can Factory

Pay what you can | Masks required
THE OLD AMERICAN CAN FACTORY
232 Third Street corner Third Avenue, Gowanus Brooklyn 11215
THECANFACTORY.ORG

An iteration of Again The Wolves created and performed by Anna Sperber with Emma Judkins and Angie Pittman

June 3-7, & June 10-14, 2020 at 8pm (was rescheduled)
at Sunset Space
Directed and choreographed by Anna Sperber
Performed by Emma Judkins, Angie Pittman, Anna Sperber, and Anna Thérèse Witenberg
Lighting Design by Madeline Best
Production Management by Shana Crawford
Creative Producing by Tara Sheena

Tara Sheena Responds to Again the Wolves

by Tara Sheena (creative producer for the project), written in dialogue with the piece after witnessing in-process showings.

Again the Wolves is an evening-length dance work by Anna Sperber that readily embraces the dualistic convictions of its four female performers. Indeed, it’s a work concerned with female power, while completely staring into the eye of how such a thing often siloes or subjugates the strength of a body moving, or existing, in space. These are very real bodies, with very real concerns, attempting to both display their outer limits of agility while knowing the stakes of what it means to be too vulnerable, or too grotesque, for a public (in this body, at this time). We carry the strong belief that our bodies and senses carry the weight of our emotional lives. The site of performance can be a space where these vibrations can be more readily accessed - where socio-emotional walls can come down to lay bare a rawness of expression.

The performers- Emma Judkins, Angie Pittman, Sperber and Anna Thérèse Witenberg- enact intricate, articulate pathways of sound and movement, declaring themselves a resonant, echoing force. Breath and marrow and involuntary utterances cut the air with inexorable density. There is no seeming force or superficial states here; there is no site of performance and site of relief. There is a landscape for undergoing, traveling through, and spinning out in order to guide a path forward. 

The performers have themselves to rely on, sometimes each other; they have the space that settles and infuriates them in equal measure (and they act accordingly); but they also have flags that can be swung and sliced through the same air we are all taking in. Not as much an extension of the body but a powerful appendage, capable of cutting through this shared space in a way that can soften even the most persistent gravitational pull. Drumming a rhythmic pulse, it is both of their bodies and far outside them, allowing the constant vibration to dip and dissolve as it wants. 

Thrown into these uncharted modes of resonance, this work carries the guiding curiosity: can we re-discover collective embodied power? Put another way: how can we use the body to remind you of its political significance? And, who is the “we” here? It is you and me and us and them. Again the Wolves is meant to implicate its viewers in this exchange; maybe you will feel agitated, alone, charged, or spurred to action. You will feel. You will. 

This research has grown out of a metaphor of pushing forward. These explorations have been juxtaposed with the use of flags, militant and relentless, set against the delicacy and care in our relationship to temporality, the architecture of the space, and each other. Through this kind of imagery, the work engages themes of reckoning, defiance, and contemplative agency. The personal is political. Again the Wolves allows the unconscious reverberations of these facets to rage and broaden; every action finds us starting before we are ready - what happens when we are moved to act without having all the answers tucked neatly in our pockets?

Admittedly, it is sometimes easiest to speak about dance- about movement, about embodied memories or contradictions- in ways that spell out what it isn’t doing, versus what it is. Again the Wolves isn’t able to completely evade the complications of language to describe the ways the work transcends everyday understandings of rigor or clarity:

There is lack of control, but it’s not chaotic;

There is rage, but it’s not bitter;

There is sweetness, but it’s not saccharine;

There is strength, but it’s not brutish. 

Again the Wolves spirals and seeps; it doesn’t abide by known sentence structures. If it were a written form, it would resemble freeform poetry over a novel or news article. There are blank spots, unconventional grammar, details that are intentionally omitted or mistakenly forgotten. Still, we need an audience to determine how these phrase fragments crystalize in suspended consciousness. As it turns out, we need you to make this real. 

Caught in the cycle, we move through and against, in relative togetherness. You may see a glimpse of something familiar- an object from childhood, a subtle embrace- but we don’t live in fixed realities. We float in on that grey day that lasts too long, but finds you dreaming a little longer. We stay with you until you unexpectedly find those shoes you thought you discarded, long ago. We remain until today is done, swirling still, through to tomorrow’s coffee. A small particle of matter that makes up the whole. You couldn’t do it without us.