Elena Demyanenko: welter
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OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Emerging from long-running experimentation with color, performance artist Elena Demyanenko presents welter, an assemblage of simultaneous solos performed by Chloë Engel '17, Leah Morrison, and Demyanenko herself. Submerged in a viscous dimension of saturated light designed by Joe Levasseur, the performers are inhabited and transformed by the composite of colors that surround them.
Together with sound artists PussyVision (Finley Janes) the performers use song and sound—incantation and invocation—to evoke something both ancient and essential to emotional survival. Scores on attention and rhythm guide performers to look at the spaces between actions, a state where losing momentum feels important. Friction and asymmetry, both auditory and physical, serve to scramble preconceived notions of form and otherwise inhibit this polyphonic, trancelike condition. Endowing the performers with a force unmediated by language, the spell that takes over results in an uncensored account of desire and its power.
Concept/direction: Elena Demyanenko
Made and performed: Elena Demyanenko, Chloë Engel, and Leah Morrison
Lights: Joe Levasseur
Choreographic assistance: Jon Kinzel
Sound: Finley Janes
Video direction: Mariam Ghani
Costumes: Richard MacPike