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What lurks in the droplets? Let us put it under the microscope.
CompanyAmyCox shows the most recent evolution of "Remnants of an Impossible Splash," leaving the poolside for an archaic-futuristic micro-universe.
By KARINNE KEITHLEY
Offoffoff.com
According to my friend Amy's system of classifying people as dawn walkers or air breathers, Amy Cox would be a dawn walker. Air breathers ascend in the world according (in the worst case) to what can be gained from others. They abound. Dawn walkers would then be the foggy mysterious opposite of that, proceeding according to curiosity and a deeply felt sense of one's own mind. I've seen Cox's work sporadically over the last nine years, and it has only deepened into the strange dawn of her mind.
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| | | IMPOSSIBLE SPLASH | Choreography by: Amy Cox.
Dancers: Amy Cox, Nathalie Dessner, Philip Karg, Susannah Keebler, Nicki Marshall, Gina Jacobs Thomas, Marya Wethers, Fransisco Rider Da Silva.
Music by: Petre Radu Scafaru.
Lighting design by: Severn Clay.
Interactive Light Sculpture: Eric Singer.
| | SCHEDULE | Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St. #11
July 5-6, 2004
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Remnants of an Impossible Splash, says the program, "is a dance that does not have an end ... instead it is a dance process that evolves over time." Of the five performances of this work since 2001, I think I've seen four. Each time it has seemed a different dance, although certain structures and bits of costume remain in play. Bound up with poolsides in its earlier days, "Splash" has been burrowing in the earth in more recent times.
In its recent instantiation, the splash process yielded a nature walk through a forest of contradictory familiars. Buggy yet elegant, forensic yet full of sunny days by the poolside, my sense veered from the idea that I was watching butterflies in a primeval forest to feeling surrounded by a sci-fi dystopia. But "veered" inadequately expresses the extent to which these many sensations were folded one into the other. Cox's work has always debunked for me any kind of duality between butterflies and forensics. Impossibly beautiful, impossibly strange.
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What happens in the piece, which is intertwined with a mobile tubing-and-light sculpture (a repeated shape with new materials, from older versions of the work), is not to be decoded. Although structures become visible — the source of much of the movement material is seen finally as roles derived from a duet — what those structures are made of is still shrouded in mystery, existing on two planes, one psychological (a hint of Victorian psychosis lurks), one organic and plant-like. The sense of the performers having an experience is bold and evident. Their seeming sense of self often eclipses the group experience, except when turned investigatively on another of their number, in their highly focused pairs-work. A face betrays a sense of vulgar shock, or perhaps infiltration by a microorganism making a slow tour of a leg. Yet there's a sense of peace with the world at hand.
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| | Cox's work has always debunked for me any kind of duality between butterflies and forensics. |
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This last splash took place in one of those gorgeous but awkward fortresses of arty types in Bushwick (it's own kind of dystopia). Approaching the building through the stilled factory landscape, empty streets and trash, was like approaching an exclusive renovated island. On the way out I felt more connected to the landscape. The splash sensibility followed me down the stairs and out of the building and I saw how the world outside was also simultaneously forensic and full of beauty.
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JULY 15, 2004
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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