Ligia Lewis, deader than dead, 2020
Saturday 25 Sep 2021 from 11am to 3pm
Sunday 26 Sep 2021 from 11am to 4:30pm
Free entry
Ongoing screening, free admission. Duration: 19 minutes
Conceived, choreographed and directed by Ligia Lewis for Made in L.A. 2020, deader than dead was originally a performance planned for the Hammer Museum galleries that had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
The creation of the performance began with an investigation into the irony and emotional distance induced by the deadpan, a comically deployed impassive attitude. From this form of immobility, Lewis first developed a choreography for 10 dancers who remained expressively flat or dead, resisting any narrative or figurative hold.
Following the pandemic, the cast was reduced to 4 performers and the performance moved towards a more traditionally theatrical presentation.
For this filmed version, the dancers are inspired by the final monologue of Macbeth and deploy a modular form in which each chapter illustrates death, stasis or emptiness. The performance is also a reflection on play, on familiarity with tragedy in black communities, on time and its loops, on touch as both an act of care and violence.
Nevertheless, Ligia Lewis infuses her proposal with a good dose of humour and comedic springs, taking up the concept of corpsing - a theatrical term for involuntary laughter at a non-comical moment.
The film does not so much document the interpretation of a play as the potential of a performance.
Concept, art direction, choreography, set design: Ligia Lewis
Film production: Reza Monahan Studio and Jim Fetterley
Director: Sean Morris
Editing: Ligia Lewis and Steven Wetrich
Performance: Ligia Lewis, Jasper Marsalis, Jasmine Orpilla and Austyn Rich
Texts: Ligia Lewis, Ian Randolph, Shakespeare and Ian McKellen
Sound design: Slauson Malone, excerpts from S. McKenna
Song: Guillaume de Machaut, "Complainte: Tels rit au main qui au soir pleure (Le rem de Fortune)," ca. 1340s
Costumes: Marta Martino
Accessories: Gabrielle Curebal
deader than dead was created for Made in L.A. 2020 / Hammer Museum, with the support of Human Resources, Los Angeles
Ligia Lewis est chorégraphe et danseuse. Son travail chorégraphique glisse entre le familier et l'inconnu.
Le corps, dans et par la pratique incarnée, rencontre des métaphores sonores et visuelles matérialisant l'énigme, la poésie et la dissonance dans son travail.
Sa dernière création scénique s’intitule Still Not Still (2021), et succède à une performance produite dans un contexte muséal, deader than dead (2020), présentée désormais sous forme de film.
En tant que danseuse, elle a collaboré avec de nombreux.ses artistes tel.le.s que Ariel Efraim Ashbel, Mette Ingvartsen, Eszter Salamon ou Les Ballets C de la B. Elle a également travaillé avec l'artiste musical Twin Shadow, l'artiste visuelle Wu Tsang, et avec le collectif de DJ NON Worldwide.