Bedlam Theatre

In Austin last year, Scotty asked: “How has our past work been ‘radical’? How can our next dance be more ‘radical’”? The bar has been set high in this dangerous territory. A lot of stupid art has been made in the pursuit of “being radical,” but we are compelled to consider the question. We began working on this new dance with a dialogue with “The New.” We dance to 20th century experimental electronic music. It sounds so dated yet you can taste the composers’ willingness to jump off a cliff into new territory. We pulled play scripts off the shelves, stripped out dialogue, obeyed the stage direction. Shepard, Genet, Trecartin… remarkable or not, we work the cusp of narrative and abstraction. The plays direct us to be more literal, violent and sexual than our usual dance practice. We are inspired by the dialogue and characters of the plays without having any interest in presenting the play. Like Richard Prince, we appropriate the images, feelings and icons of the texts. Yes, it looks exactly like a Marlborough ad, but we’re not selling cigarettes. We are dancing sculptors, builders and architects. The broken furniture and clutter in the studio becomes monument, un-monument, American Living Room, a place to hide, a giant theremin. We’re staging a condo, stepping back to discern if even we would buy this dance, in this real-estate market. We are resourceful. We bounce to the bouncy music. We smash beer cans on our foreheads and bellies like frat boys. We glue-gun these cans into a Mardi Gras-worthy headdress. We are insects, drunk on nectar and having sex with plastic flowers. We are cleaning up after an oil spill on the Mississippi using absorbent pompoms and wearing cardboard boxes on our heads as sun shields. Arwen clucks like a chicken while Scotty rides a horse around a pair of jeans. What is trash? What is beautiful? What is usable? What is violent?

Praise for the last Heron/HIJACK outing: “It’s hard to know what to say about ‘3 Minutes of Pork and Shoving,’ other than it was one of the most enjoyable, language-defying performances I’ve seen in a long time”. — LaRocco, NYTimesHIJACK and Scott Heron met up in Russia, bought some blackmarket high heels and made a dance called “3 Minutes of Pork and Shoving” in 2002. After seven years and many trips up and down the Mississippi River they have a body of collaborative work and a love of putting their independent work next to each other. Their shared show at PS122 inspired New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco to write: “it was one of the most enjoyable, language-defying performances I’ve seen in a long time”. (see full review below)

HIJACK is the choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon & Arwen Wilder. Van Loon & Wilder both grew up in Chicago. They met at Colorado College and established their collaboration in Minneapolis in 1993. Specializing in the inappropriate, HIJACK is best known for “short-shorts”: pop song-length miniatures designed to deliver a sharp shock and football field-scaled spectacles for 15-50 performers. The duo has taught and performed in Japan, Russia, Central America, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Austin, and Maine.

Scott Heron’s solo and group work has been presented in practically every downtown New York venue including The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place and especially Performance Space 122 which has commissioned four evening-length works. Musical collaborators include instrument builder/bassoonist Leslie Ross and guitarist Chris Cochrane. He received a 2003 New York Dance and Theater “Bessie” Award for his body of work as a performer. Trusting the intelligence of his whole body his dances stem from a process of open practice of the unknown. Transformations, wigs, heels, and sumptuous sets made from trash often make an appearance. Unafraid of bizarre and passionate states, he nonetheless finds classical elegance and beauty while dancing too.