The Symmetry Project – Study #19: solo medi(t)ations/intersections
Sept. 22-23 2009 6:00 -10:00 pm
Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Gravity presents
Maria F. Scaroni and Jess Curtis
In a new installation work
After sold out performances of Symmetry Study #14 in March 2009 at CounterPULSE and Symmetry Study #17, Transmission, a Union Square site-specific community installation for the San Francisco International Arts Festival, Gravity returns with a gallery based “live-art” installation, The Symmetry Project – Study #19: solo medi(t)ations/intersections. Debuting at Intersection for the Arts on September 22nd and 23rd for four hours each day, The Symmetry Project – Study #19 is the newest work in a celebrated series of sparse, otherworldly movement pieces by choreographer/ performers Maria Francesca Scaroni and Jess Curtis.
The medi(t)ators: Two naked bodies, one male, one female, with and without fur jackets, negotiating perception and exposure moment-by-moment, and reclaiming through their physical presence a symbolic, broad meaning of their organs and parts.
Scaroni and Curtis take their physically based art form out of a traditional theatrical context into an art gallery as a live-art installation, thus affording viewers the ability to see the body and its metaphorical possibilities through different filters, durations of time, and points-of-view, each informed by the visitors’ own bodies within the gallery.
Study #19/ solo medi(t)ations/intersections : An intimate ritual of the everyday. Symmetrically inhabiting the gallery space at Intersection for the Arts for 4 straight hours on two consecutive days, Scaroni and Curtis improvise individual and intersecting itineraries, medi(t)ating on the external inputs and internal impulses inherent to bodies in space and time, while constrained by the self-imposed rule of symmetrical movement.
The Symmetry Project is a journey through perception. Two naked bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score, constricted by a specific physical practice; that of moving symmetrically, relative to themselves or to each other. Constrained to a physical practice, a constructed space of temporary “habitus”, the performers bodies continually tune and adjust their frequency, reformulating the perception of the self and of the other. In the sharing of a central axis, spine, mouth, genitals, face, and anus, performers Scaroni and Curtis reveal their interconnectedness and centrality in embodied experience. Through exposing the body’s awkwardness, its monstrosity, its potential failure and finiteness, The Symmetry Project – Study #19 creates a space for visitors to experience the possibility of the unknown, the wondrous, and the ecstatic.
Come any time stay as long as you want.
Dance Studies Working Group 