CHOREOGRAPHY 2009, Marble and cultured marble, variable configurations
Choreography presents a choreography of crisis, a series of planned situations tossed away as if they were so many unavoidable mistakes. The array of ‘cultured’ marble banana peels appear strewn - not hewn - on the floor. The imminent future implied by the ‘slapstick’ humor of the pratfall is shown to be the calculated placement of the pitfall.
Choreography converts the ‘slip’ into a ‘stumble’. The intractable becomes concrete. A ‘slip’ is accidental, its damage lamentable and victim sympathetic. When it ‘happens’ to someone else, it is comical. Crisis, like physical humor, is based on speed and surprise, necessitating haste and condemning circumspection. Crisis dies with analysis. To ‘stumble’ emphasizes an external obstacle or indicates impaired agency. Stumbling is an event or encounter to be dealt with. It compels a backward look, identifies missteps, and assigns blame. Choreography doesn’t find the now millions of downwardly mobile people, and the economic sleight of hand that has assisted their fall, funny at all. It is a field of injustice.
(First shown at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh in 2009)
