existing
“existing” is a solo re-imagination of a section of my full length ensemble work entitled Unbound, We Howl. Through audience interaction, choreographic play, and an intermedia, interdisciplinary playground, I interrogate and physicalize the way my female/queer body is policed and made visible in the culture, arts, politics, and people I interact with. It is a study in self-care, self-stress, self-revolt, and self-spectacle.
Throughout the work audience members were invited to manipulate audio clips in a custom designed Isadora patch layered above a sound score at computer station in the aisle of the theatre. Participants had control over what voices were heard, how loud, how distorted, etc. through a custom designed interface, program in Isadora by Troika Tronix. The performance was influenced by the choice and collage of sound that would differ by person to person, and show to show.
Premiered in March 2019, Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival- Kalamazoo, MI
Performed August 2019- Detroit Dance City Festival at the Detroit Institute for the Arts- Detroit, MI
Performed August 2019- Dance Studies Association Conference, Northwestern Univ.- Evanston, IL
Performer, Choreographer, Media Designer: Lexi Clark-Stilianos
Music: a soft throbbing of time by Frank Bretschneider and various audio excerpts
“
[Clark-Stilianos] laces her floor work with an extraordinary sense of propulsion as she tumbles about the room near the feet of that first concentric circle of guests […] in her dancing, offers an alternative narrative, in which a woman intentionally takes up space, rails against creepy men and holds her ground. She reaches beyond her outstretched extremities as the words “fatigue” and “money” flash across the screen […] “Existing,” the intention is for women to cut through the noise, and to take and hold space – and that’s worth finding a chair from which you can see it.
— Lauren Warnecke, from “RAD Fest’s first night of short works puts American gender and race politics front and center”