Michelle Ellsworth at Fusebox Festival

Presented in partnership with Fusebox Festival

In The Rehearsal Artist, a small group of audience members surveils a dancer who is simultaneously: 1) watching reenactments of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 2) participating in a mash-up of some the most canonical social science experiments of the last 50 years. Occasionally, an eight-foot-high wooden wheel assists dancers as they rotate in the sagittal plane with their nose as the axis. Each rotation tests the viability of the constructed environment the dancers inhabit and allows the audience to reconsider the nature of stability. Knee aprons, one-way surveillance glass, Mormon temple rituals, and a wooden bikini help prepare the audience for shifts in perspective and other revelations related to death. Post-Verbal Social Network (PVSN) employs both contemporary and pre-industrial technologies to augment the physical labor of choreography and community. In a series of PVSN prototypes, Ellsworth and friends commingle simple mechanical apparatuses as well as Javascript and Arduinos with choreography to test possible non-language based, non-mediated, human-to-human encounters.

Creative Team

The Rehearsal Artist

Creator: Michelle Ellsworth
Performers: Lauren Beale, Michelle Ellsworth, Ondine Geary, Laura H. Kim
Lighting Designer and Reactive Artist: Ryan Seelig
Associate Lighting Design: Barbara Samuels
Sound and Video Designer: Max Bernstein
Flipbook and Web Programmer: Satchel Spencer
Set Designer: Bruce Miller
Production Manager: Emily Rea
Run Time: 35 minutes

Post Verbal Social Network

Creator: Michelle Ellsworth
Dancers in Videos: Luke Iwabuchi, Laura Kim, Kevin Sweet, Constance Harris, Ondine Geary, Lauren Beale, Rick Manayan, Laura Ann Samuelson, Max Bernstein, Ryan Seelig, Uli Miller, Bruce Miller, Zoe Scofield, Annie Kelly, Satchel Spencer, and Priscilla Cohan
Lighting Designer and Reactive Artist: Ryan Seelig
Sound and Video Designer: Max Bernstein
Programmer: Satchel Spencer
Set Designer: Bruce Miller
Production Manager: Emily Rea

From Fusebox

If Michelle Ellsworth’s The Rehearsal Artist doesn’t actually turn you upside down, it’ll be about as disorienting as if it had.  With its accompanying installation Post-Verbal Social Network, The Rehearsal Artist is a series of tactile experiments in the implications of watching and being watched. A human head gazes around at a doll-size kitchen; an actor spins 360 degrees in a plywood wheel; and spectators receive surprising documents of their audience experiences. Ellsworth’s light touch of absurdity and humor is disarming, as she leads you through a maze of experiences that cross-wire your senses and cause you to question reality.

The Rehearsal Artist was made possible with support from The MAP Fund, (supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) and by the National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund/Forth Fund Project co-commissioned by Performance Space 122 in partnership with The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, On The Boards, Women and Their Work, University of Colorado Boulder and NPN.  Additional support from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University,  the Boulder County Arts Alliance, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Post Verbal Social Network was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Post Verbal Social Network is also supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Headlands Center for the Arts Residency program, the Boulder County Arts Alliance, the University of Colorado Boulder.