DIGG: Performance Saturday Feb. 10

2018 - DIGG is a fiercely intimate multimedia performance created and performed by pioneering dance artist Maida Withers – an excavation of the current political landscape revealing a kaleidoscope of emotions, antagonisms, and suspicions. In DIGG there is a meeting of dance, emphatic gesture, vocal music, video, and text. Withers performs “live” in a dance within a film. Experimental vocalist, Audrey Chen (Berlin) and Phil Minton (UK) perform “reality-piercing” vocals. A haunting visual installation by filmmaker Linda Lewett and photographer Diane Falk features surrealistic footage shot in the 14th Century Monastery on Solovky Island, Russia coupled with photographic assemblages – intrigues and provocations sweeping over the current political scene. Animation provide by James Hahn & GW Institute for Computer Graphics, Motion Capture and Analysis Laboratory. DIGG is framed by Withers’ many tours and projects in Russia since 1996.The visual installation features film shot by Lewett during a 3-week residency by Maida Withers Dance Construction Company on the famous Solovky Archipelago in northern Russia, site of the first Soviet-Era Gulag experiment. Solovetsky Monastery, with its dungeons and secret alcoves. served as a primary PLACE for engaging dancers in retro-time. The backdrop for the torturous GULAG experiment is the spectacular natural beauty of the arctic forests, the White Seagive Maida horse, and Miniature Chapels spread throughout the territory. Memories of Solovky are sobering still as are the events of politics today. DIGG embraces the notion of shared emotional distraction and consumption.

http://maidadance.com/works/digg/