THE VISIBLE SEAM
Premier, Sanman Studios. Houston, TX Dec 2023
The Visible Seam is an original work of dance theater commissioned in response to the work of visual artists, Triciajane Asuncion and Josh Allen, as part of their joint exhibition, "CONCORD."
Inspired by the work of madness theorist La Marr Jurrell Bruce, poet Chris Abani, and cultural theorist Nicole Fleetwood, The Visible Seam imagines the individual body as a singular "thread" of history, which becomes enwrapped, entangled, and unspooled from the larger entanglement of time. The conventional devices of the theater like light, sound, and set are all laid bare for the audience to witness being manipulated mid-performance as opposed to their usual position "behind the curtain" simultaneously demystifying and re-mystifying those mechanism which enable the theater of our lives. Combining hypnotic electronic soundscape with music from the balkan folk tradition, the Visible Seams is also an entanglement of sonic technologies, engaging with multiple registers of reality making through sound, light, and dance.