the beginning

despinasophia — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:29:31 +0000

Before creating product X, I had been thinking about how dance is expected to be an entertainment product, part of the market, a distracting spectacle to be consumed. My environment also felt thick with products. I live next to Times Square, a global market showcase of shiny products to consume. I was also interested in subverting the idea of being a product in the market by focusing on the process, which was trying to discover relationships and connections by interacting with unsuspecting strangers.

product X = dancers + props + unsuspecting audience

product X has had different incarnations. The first product was created for the Howl Festival in 2004.product X has been an ongoing investigation of improvisation scores in environments that are in flux and an examination of our relationship as movement improvisors within that “real” life context. How dance, a process-oriented ‘foreign” language, intersects with the production oriented flow in a public space, was an early question that intrigued us. Our last investigation was prompted by how powerless we felt in the face of world events. Feeling as though we, as a country have our heads buried in the sand, we chose to use that image to investigate this state of partially obstructed vision. We attempted to create improvised compositions without seeing each other. We chose to do this series of investigations on the sidewalk in front of Chashama on 42nd St. Improvising with partial vision, near Grand Central Station, was a way to embody and explore this visually obstructed state that resonated due to current state of world affairs. Muffled vision affects how we experience time and space. Trying to sense each other without seeing was an adrenaline-releasing challenge.