It is clear that the action of the thumbsucking child is determined by pleasure
Humans break themselves in like animals, which means to say, dressage
The body becomes a useful force only if it is both productive and subjugated
That inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy
I am talking about the cells and fluids witnessing themselves
Jonathan is developing a new work that is moving from research to early development of material. Research has been reading, thinking, writing, and exploring what it would mean to choreograph for the cells of the body, rather than for the big parts, the limbs or the body as a whole. Embodiment means that we have power in the world. Embodiment means that we are vulnerable to each other. The individual is the emergence of the trillion cells. The nation is the emergence of the million individuals. The cellular can speak to the societal. How could that be true?
The work being imagined might look something like this:
An audience of four enters into a room within a room
A micro-theater, a puppet theater
The performer’s body is the landscape of the stage
Watching the cells of the body move like the murmuration of starlings
A creature that would live on such a landscape
Crawling over it, flying over it
Calling it home
This is an evolving work. Current artists on the project are:
Jonathan Meyer – choreographer & bodily performer
Sara Zalek – bodily performer
Tom Lee – puppetry designer & puppetry performer
Lauren Kunath – puppetry performer
Joe St.Charles – composer
as though your body were right (and the gentler world mistaken) is being created in tandem with Julia Antonick’s project Tend. These pieces are conceived as a performance diptych able to be viewed independently or as a double feature. They are being scheduled for provisional performances fall of 2020.
Photography – Ian Vecchiotti
Pictured – Jonathan Meyer
To find scheduled events visit our calendar.
