killkillkill is an 18 minute dance theater work exploring the interiority and immediacy of violence.

Directed by Hilary Bryan
Created in collaboration with the performers: Krissy Barcenas, Christine Bowden, Tamera N. Claunch, Elspeth Erickson, Michelle Hamilton, Jennifer Hart, Lyndsay Lunsmann, Jessica Prachyl, Kristen Roberts, Heather Samuelson, Allen Truong, Jamie Zahradnik

Music by Glen Velez, Wimme Saari, Zoe Keating
Original text by Christine Bowden
Set design by Andy Karavitis
Sound engineered by Pavmire Records
Special thanks to Jesus Acosta, Tania Peterson

Commissioned by Sam Houston State University
Première November 29, 2007
Huntsville, TX

Program note from restaging of this work at Cal. State University Fresno, CA, January 2008:

This piece comes out of my confusion that my country is at war, and yet I hear very little discussion of it. What is our relationship to this violence we have initiated? What is the emotional work we do to distance ourselves each time we see images or hear of more carnage and displaced people? And if we are not actively engaging with each other on the topic, how deeply are we each supressing it within ourselves? Not only is our administration keeping quiet about this war -- so are we all. This war seems to be something we are integrating -- each one of us -- in private.

I'm also curious how we differentiate violence against terrorists (and others we name as such) and violence against ourselves. I think that the violence we are seeing in the Middle East is not actually something out there far away. It's right here, inside of each one of us.

The movement for this piece comes from conversations and journal writing by collaborating dancers both here in Fresno and in Texas, where the dance department shares a building with the Department of Military Science. I have borrowed the diagonal structure for this piece from choreographer Steve Paxton (also knows as the originator of the contemporary dance form Contact Improvisation). His 1967 choreography Satisfying Lover features 30 pedestrians (not "dancers" in the traditional sense) simply walking across the stage with all their individual quirks and beauty. I appreciate the humanity and the populist stance of that gesture. We are all here -- living, loving, killing.