100 Northern Ave
You’ve probably never seen anything like this before. Six members of the vertical dance troupe BANDALOOP descended the façade of the new 100 Northern Ave. building commemorating its grand opening at Boston’s Seaport District. The performers are held securely by special rigging allowing them to mesmerize audiences with dynamic physicality and intricate choreography. BANDALOOP honors nature, community, and the human spirit through perspective-bending dance. A pioneer in vertical performance, BANDALOOP seamlessly weaves dynamic physicality, intricate choreography and climbing technology to turn the dance floor on its side. Under the artistic direction of Amelia Rudolph, the work re-imagines dance, activates public spaces, and inspires wonder and imagination in audiences around the world.

Rising Awareness
Could one succeed in rising the level of awareness by sharpening one’s perception rather than repeating the vapid catchphrase, “raising awareness,” which has been coopted by an ever-growing money-raising industry that fails to improve our circumstances in a substantive way? Wearing a cocktail dress, I assembled a large kinetic structure made of wooden beams and ladders in front of the audience. I then walked and balanced on the twenty-foot wide structure at eight feet off the floor. Rising Awareness addresses my ongoing preoccupations about the physicality of experience, inhabiting the body, proprioception as the possible strongest sense of self, how spatial awareness correlates with overall awareness and self-awareness, how physicality enhances creativity, finding balance between gravity and groundlessness, a concept of happiness as the fullest expression of one’s particular cognitive potential, pushing boundaries, and the current irreverent politics of liability.

The look elsewhere
The work, which in this video version is coupled with uncanny virtual landscapes, blurs the boundaries between the real and the simulated, while expanding the artwork into the virtual via the VR-headset wearing dancers. The artwork captures the entangled play between the participants, but also provides the viewer with a new perspective—opening a window onto the virtual dimension of the performance. The borders keep on fading, from the point where technology begins and physicality ends.