The performing body, the sculptural body, the body as subject. Just as machines break down, bodies break down, fail. Drop operates at the intersection of these ideas of ‘body.’ It is an active proposition. Drop, topple, plonk, drag, droop, lie, sprawl, rest, pause, float, stop, drip. Drop is a dance, and water is the body.
Drop is a dance that embodies contrary impulses of control and abandon. A machine has control, a drop only has direction. Combine them. Site recordings and performed sounds mean listening happens twice, on capture, and again while looking. The site recordings are from the lakes and the rivers and the creeks. The dance is for the lakes and the rivers and the creeks.
The dance of Drop operates with a pair of rope spooling machines and push-pull machines working together. The scores determining movement are derived from some key 1970s pieces by American choreographer Trisha Brown, where she variously incorporated equipment to expand the limits of a dancer’s address to gravity; developed scores that incorporated systems of cumulative repetition; and choreographed movements that, while deliberate and timed, were intended to appear at times wholly improvisational. The dance of Drop, building on Brown’s systems-based choreography, moves from casual gesture to drastic plummet, writing the unexpected through the language of machine logic, delivering an endlessly satisfying surprise, time and time again.
Exhibition History: 2025 Christie Contemporary (Toronto, Canada)
Publication: Christie, Claire. “Drop.” Christie Contemporary, September 2025. Exhibition brochure.
Supported by the Ontario Arts Council
See also: Until
