TAKES

Premiere: September 3-18, 2010 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia PA 
626 North 5th Street - Theater West at the HUB

Development Residencies/ in-progress showings: Amherst College (June 2009); Maggie Alesse National Center for Choreography MANCC, Tallahassee FL  (August 2009); Swarthmore College (October 2009), The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (March/May/June 2010) 

TAKES is a genre bending exploration of dance, installation and cinema inspired by the writings of Jorge Louis Borges. Canuso will collaborate with film maker Lars Jan, musician Mike Kiley and performer Dito Van Reigersberg to create an interactive performance event that collects and reincorporates the superseded—lost gestures, ideas, and outtakes — into the performance itself — weaving together what we leave behind. The theme of the work is the cinematic notion of a “take”—that is, multiple iterations of the same scene. In cinema, the best “take” is chosen, and the others are discarded. In live performance the audience witnesses a fleeting embodiment of a work. In TAKES the disappearing moments of a live performance will be captured (by video) and woven into an elaborate frame of “takes” creating a living installation. The two live performers at the center of the installation mirror and respond to the documentation surrounding them, allowing the present moment to exist at the fragile nexus of an audience members visceral experience of a shifting past and future. The audience is free to wander and shift perspective during the performance as well as during gallery hours. They are invited into the gallery to explore the performance space and interact with the exhibit. At scheduled performance times, the two performers enter and the live event unfolds.

Currently in progress, TAKES will premiere September 2010 at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.

The research and development of TAKES is made possible by a grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance.

view a 5-minute documentary of TAKES at MANCC here