Victoria Marks
Let me first say — things change. And if ever there were a medium that was committed to transition and change, even to impermanence, it’s dance. So, being a choreographer, I seek to celebrate change.
I have a little change in plans for you. Back when I applied to participate in REDCAT’s NOW Festival, I thought I would present a work that had been in development for the previous year. As time would have it, I completed Smallest Gesture/Grandest Frame, but a summer rehearsal period yielded another newer work that I was excited about. So, with the blessing of George Lugg [the REDCAT associate director who oversees the NOW festival], I decided to share the newer-never-seen-before work. It took till the eleventh hour to name the new dance. Allow me to present, Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance.
When I began making Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance, I wasn’t trying to make an inefficient or imbalanced dance. I was wondering if I could describe some of the perceptions I have of my son, who struggles with connections to others.
"Medium Big Inefficient Considerable Imbalanced Dance"
I started working on this dance by developing choreographic structures that spelled out connection between the dancers. I hoped to then find ways to plot out the role of a dancer who only sometimes slipped into relationship, but mostly orbited solo.
In the end, the dance probably speaks less about my son, and more about my own feelings of connection with others. Doesn’t it always turn out that way? That when we observe others we are always placing a healthy dollop of ourselves in the middle?
This dance is marked by another observation — I often value movement vocabularies that are based on ideas of physical efficiency. Surely efficiency is a key ingredient in the mechanics of virtuosity and a value that many post-modern choreographers of my generation embrace.
"Medium Big Inefficient Considerable Imbalanced Dance"
In Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance, I chose to look at the opposite of efficiency, to look at effort and imbalance. This seemed to reveal a resonant world of “feeling.” The dancers’ bodies in Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance are far from calm and aloof. They are ruffled and knotted. They carry baggage.
I hope that the audience finds the dancers’ exploration of effort and imbalance to be evocative of the way we are marked by memory, feeling, and the impact of time. I hope that we will recognize in ourselves our own pull towards one another, the places where longing replaces tangible connection and where we are also alone.
Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance is presented in Week Three of REDCAT’s 8th Annual New Original Works Festival, September 8-24 with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:30 pm.
WEEK TWO | September 15-17
Robert Cucuzza: Cattywampus, Rosanna Gamson/World Wide: Layla Means Night
WEEK THREE | September 22-24
Tandem & Timur and the Dime Museum: Zoophilic Follies, Michel Kouakou/Daara Dance: Sack, Victoria Marks: Medium Big Inefficient Considerably Imbalanced Dance
SINGLE TICKETS: $18 general, $14 students; FESTIVAL PASSES: $36 for all 3 programs
FOR TICKETS & INFO: Visit: www.redcat.org, call 213 237-2800 or drop by the REDCAT box office
LOCATION: REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), 631 West 2nd Street, LA.
Victoria Marks, an Alpert Award winner and Guggenheim Fellow, has been practicing knowing and unknowing, making dances for stage and film, over the past 27 years.
