Along with several friends, I helped Molly put together the costumes and rigging for the performance at California College of the Arts. The outfits are made from long ribbons of white rubber, and connect a pair of bellydancers (the breathtaking Ariellah and Predslava) at various body points through carabiners and 150+ metal eyehooks sunk into the gallery walls. Each of the hooks had to be plotted and inserted into the walls by hand, and every aspect of both costumes had to be carefully cemented and checked, and then the garments untangled and hung. Needless to say, the team put in an ungodly amount of physical work getting the performance ready. Thankfully I didn’t have to conceptualize anything–Molly did all the hard labor there!

Even after spending four days in the gallery, working long hours on the filthy concrete floor, the space felt oddly magical when the dancers entered to perform. The audience, once babbling and sipping free wine outside, hushed in awe and clustered around the perimeter of the gallery. No one spoke above a respectful whisper during the 95 minutes Predslava and Ariellah moved together.

One performer’s movements encouraged or prevented the other’s, dictated by the tautness of every rubber strap. Each dancer wore a Bluetooth headset connected to my laptop, so they could work with a playlist of music, but the audience only heard the slap of rubber and eerie echoes from the slightly disturbing student film being played on a loop next door.

Molly’s friend took video of the performance from the back corner of the gallery. I will post a clip when it’s placed online, though as professional as it was, I doubt it will adequately capture the awesomeness of this event. As I mentioned before, I am exceedingly proud of Molly and her work with Interlaced, and am looking forward to her next project, though I’ve made her promise to take a break before trying to do this again.

In case you missed the link, check the Flickr gallery here.
Visit her Livejournal for more information about the work of Molly Mitchell and some pre-show shots.

MOLLY MITCHELL – INTERLACED

Molly says:

“…To think beyond the formal overlap between the disciplines to how they impact the body, a dress and a building are both constructed to facilitate certain forms of movement while restricting others – they shape how we think and move. Our sense of ourselves as bodies in space is mediated by fashion and architecture throughout the course of our lives – and the way we interface with the world and with each other directly reflects the advances in both disciplines.

The invisible, felt relationships between bodies and the culturally constructed environment that sometimes restrains them, sometimes frees them and sometimes does both at once is my area of interest in this work. …Interlaced will involve two dancers who are linked to each other through the architecture of the Nave by white rubber strapping that runs through their costumes. The simultaneously stretchy and resistant nature of the rubber restricts certain avenues of movement while enabling others; the piece is about reciprocal movement, a striving to connect over distance and direct vs. indirect contact.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. This is my best gal’s MFA show for California College of the Arts in San Francisco. I will be in attendance, and if you’re in the area, please come too. I’m very proud of her and all that she dreams up.