RITUALS
Rituals explores where contemporary performance practice meets everyday life in a time of social isolation. Can the things performers know about body-mind practices, their own interior, dealing with having a body that is perceived, dreaming, gathering, beholding, altered states, and Dionysus give meaning to these siloed days? In each installment, artists talk about their work and make a ritual offering, sharing some practice or artifact that helps blur the line between performance and life. For inquiries email Caitlyn: caitlyn@thequarterlessreview.com
December 21, 2021
COMMITTING TO THE FAKE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANH VO
By CAITLYN TELLA
I wanted to interview Anh Vo after watching this video of Red (For Communism). Performed at Judson Church in 2019, the dancer sails across the floor, skipping in clipped cadence, occasionally making perky, ceremonious leaps. I watched on my laptop, entranced by the lively near-precision of their steps and commitment to keep skipping for an annoyingly long time. As nothing new continues to happen, joy, set to communist revolutionary music, accumulates, and to my surprise, given the frequently bland conceit belying so much duration-as-content performance, so does a palpable lack of pretentiousness.
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May 21, 2021
CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN DREAMS AND REALITY
By CAITLYN TELLA
On the work of Ta-Nia
If the proverbial stage entertains limitless fantasy and the audience sits in concrete reality, what lies between? Ta-Nia intricately perceive the possibilities of that synthesis to build a new space. In their words, “a blk space in an anti-blk society.”
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March 26th, 2021
THE PERFORMATIVE SELF
By CAITLYN TELLA
On the work of Leeny Sack
All actors are terrified that they are bad actors, so they try hard to be truthful––a trap––because effortful verisimilitude reads as bad acting. The TikTok meme “What’s an acting performance that was so good you forgot it was acting?” highlights this phenomenon. Whether stitched with sincere, ironic, or correct answers to the question, the performance of the meme itself reveals the conflation of acting and psychological realism in cultural consciousness––good acting being the ability to conceal artifice, bad acting the failure to do so.
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February 12th, 2021
THE IMPOSSIBLE REALM OF EMBODIMENT
By CAITLYN TELLA
On the work of Haruna Lee
What makes “~*real*~” theater so thrilling is the sensational feedback loop between actors and audiences, woven into the fabric of shared space and time. Unaided by the literal porousness of space that transmits breath and laughter, theater on Zoom plays out more on a psychic plane, which, actually, has its own erotic merits. Like masturbating, actors can only imagine they are being seen.
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EST 2020
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© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EST 2020
︎
© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED