Bottom feeder

Postponed due to COVID-19

Bottom feeder explores the disintegration and arrival of theatrical troupes, with the over-arching goal of offering power to performers and audiences. In the bare walls of Abrons Arts Center underground theater we offer a vulnerable dance where we endeavor to show an unfiltered viewpoint into the work of our bodies, by placing our audiences inside our dances. Here, all materiality, architecture, objects, narration, abstraction, viewer and performer exist together in spherical orb of impressions and recollections which breeds within our collective consciousness.

The performers are a collective force of nature whose rhythmic incantation casts a corporeal spell where untraceable patterns emerge and physical logic surfaces. It is a testament to the skill of the dancer and offers permission for an unraveling of intellectual meaning making and an emergence of bodily intelligence. In this work, we rely on rhythm to be the most fundamental exploration layered with acts of agency and primal responses. Build from excess and structural complexity, it is a performance practice where the simultaneous holding onto structure while also letting go of it become a courageous dive into the darkness of dancing a dance that is made and woven in the moment. I utilize agency and structural excess as a means to transform and shred both the performance of the work as well as my own authorship. Bottom feeder is about destruction, decay and the artifacts of desires never realized. Here, in the rubble of our lives we create a covenant of interconnectedness with our viewers were we seek to engender empathy.

Together we are our actions. We are our will. We are enough. 

Choreography by Molly Poerstel

Performers: Mary Reade, Eleanor Smith, Kamilah Udomsap

Sound Design: Chris Seeds

Lighting Design: Mandy Ringger

Project Management: Kirsten Michelle Schnittker