NO MORE BEAUTIFUL DANCES

“No more beautiful dances” wrestles with the ideas of exploration, introspection, and reframing of a woman after becoming a mother, and being an immigrant. Lenzu’s dance theater piece uses spoken word, drawings, and video projections to tell a personal vision of femininity, and what it means to be a woman today.

​Choreographer/Dancer: Anabella Lenzu

Video Projection Design: Todd Carroll

Director: Daniel Pettrow

Costumes: Jennifer Johanos

​“No More Beautiful Dances,” a dance/theater solo in which the spoken word, drawings, and video projections merge to offer a very personal view of femininity and what it means to be a woman today.

In this interdisciplinary solo, Anabella’s wrestles with issues of identity as experienced by a contemporary artist who is also a woman, mother, and immigrant.  “I had arrived at a moment where I am 44 years old,” she states, “have two kids, notice my body aging, and reflecting on other changes psychologically and emotionally.  The work keeps me humble and honest about who I am and what I look like. I show the things most people want to hide as dancers. I show the body of a 42-year old woman. For me it’s about embracing who I am at the moment.” On another level, the artist feels that through dialogue with collaborators and mentors, her work starts out specific, but arrives at a universal message.

The choreography is captured not only by the audience, but by two live-streaming cameras, one above and the other below the stage area, two laptops and two projectors.  Technology in this piece is a magnifying glass, showing something normally hidden from view. The cameras become a portal to another dimension for the audience and performer.

​*Photo credit: Theo Cote

Originally January 21-23 2020 at The Brick Theater

BECKY’S LAMENT

Becky’s life in her sweet little hometown is delightful—or is it? Follow her down memory lane, over, under, around and through the unspeakable “Incident” she won’t let herself remember. CJ Holm creates and explodes Becky’s world through text, movement, music, and authentic Midwestern cuisine.

​written, choreographed, and performed by CJ Holm

​Inspired by a trip to the rural Midwest, writer/choreographer CJ Holm began to imagine an alternate self whose parents hadn’t gotten out of their small town. The character of Becky began to form—sincere and earnest; convinced of her own virtue; pleased as punch with her place in the cosmos. But an unspeakable “Incident” in her town’s past throws a spike in the middle of Becky’s straight and clear path. Who gets to be innocent? What sharp reality is Becky protecting with her squishy pleasantries? And what does it all have to do with Grandma’s recipe for zucchini bread?

Originally January 21-23 2020 at The Brick Theater