a performance-practice on land, body, and capital
by Tommy Noonan
Presented by the North Carolina Dance Festival
Thursday + Friday, October 6th + 7th, 2022
7PM Performance
For tickets click here
“...Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger…”
From the poem: “Lost” by David Wagoner
ABOUT ASSEMBLY
Assembly is iterative, and changes according to each place in which it is performed. It carries with it an installation by the scenographer Liam Al Zafari, which displays fragments and traces of other iterations that have come to inform it up until this moment.
Assembly grows out of another process called Eclipse, which took place at Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, between 2020 and 2022 and is a response to the score: How to. A Score by Norwegian/Israeili choreographer Mia Habib.
Eclipse brought together a diverse group of multi-disciplinary artists, activists and Restorative Justice specialists in a place where the weight of history and White supremacy still lands perceptibly (and differently) on different bodies. In Eclipse, we formed as a group of 10, asking ourselves how to assemble together, in difference, in that place – how to build together, what to build together, or whether this is even possible.
In that project, I was in the role of co-facilitator with Murielle Elizéon – Eclipse is very much a product of our work together. I brought with me tools and knowledge from my experience as a choreographer, a dancer and a community organizer. And yet, more importantly, I was in the role of student. Our group contained an incredible array of humans, carrying with them profound tools and practices, as well as embodied and ancestral wisdom – much of which I am still only beginning to grasp.
Contiguous to this process, How To. A Score was an invitation from Mia Habib that provided a framework for my learning. In the score I found material to bring to my community of Eclipse, and in it I also found methods to frame my individual learning in the form of a new artistic process.
The result of this process: Assembly, stands as its own performance-practice hybrid – one which adapts to each iteration in a different place, and each piece of land beneath that place. Its themes vary according to the given historical, economic and political conditions connected to the land where Assembly is performed, but it always names the complex relationship between land, economy and body in the place called “Here”, and asks audiences to inhabit that place through their own bodies. Though it continues to transform, Assembly carries with it the seed of Eclipse, and remains in communication with five other solos from five artists around the world. This production in Greensboro is made possible by a “Trailblazer Award” given to Culture Mill by Dance Project NC, and with additional support from Greensboro Project Space.
As I bring Assembly to a different context, Here, I remain deeply indebted to the community from whom I am still learning, and from whom I am borrowing and adapting scores and practices: Murielle Elizéon, Val Hanson, CJ Suitt, Ay-Jaye Nelson, Jasmine Powell, Paura Heo, Danny Cowan, Katie Nunn, Caitlyn Swett, Myra Weise, Monet Marshall, Mia Habib, Filiz Sizanli, Julie Nioche, Thami Hector Manekehla and Thais de Marco.
ABOUT NCDF
The NC Dance Festival, a production of the Dance Project, is an annual touring showcase of modern and contemporary choreography by NC artists. Dance Project, Inc., founded by Jan Van Dyke and now directed by Anne Morris and Lauren Joyner, is a non-profit organization that has been operating in North Carolina since 1989, coordinating the NC Dance Festival, running a community studio, and managing the Van Dyke Dance Group. The Festival establishes a network of venues for professional regional choreography and performance, expanding accessibility of dance throughout the state while raising the profile of North Carolina’s own artists. We hope to create a stronger community for dance as we contribute to a community that is stronger because of dance. The North Carolina Dance Festival has been supported by state and local arts councils as well as local and national foundations and individual donations. For more information, please visit our website (www.danceproject.org).
