A collective failure instigated with Keith Hennessy and produced by Circo Zero.

Unstable structures supported by unsustainable systems, this dance cannot stand up on its own.

Turbulence (a dance about the economy) plays with normative disruptions and calculated disregard for generally accepted rules of engagement. A collaborative creation, the work is an experimental hybrid of contemporary dance, improvised happening, and political theater; it is a bodily response to economic crisis. Instigated before Occupy and engaging questions of debt, value, and exchange, Turbulence is intended as both provocation and affirmation of global movement for economic justice.       

More frictions that drive the work: economic crisis, disaster capitalism, debt, precarity, propaganda, torture, union busting, magic, collaboration, war, and physical performance.

Responding both to economic and ecological crises, Turbulence is an experiment not only in performance, but also in developing alternative modes of producing performance. Integrating new cast members as generative collaborators for each performance, the work resists fixed or predetermined outcomes. Improvisation is both survival strategy and political tactic. The economies of making dances and being an artist also impacts our research.

Accumulating dances, images, texts, songs and tactics with each cast, the process was tested at venues in San Francisco, Stolzenhagen/Germany, Vienna, Portland, and Pontempeyrat/France from 2010-12 before going on to tour extensively until 2017

Tour

Portland/TBA Festival, Seattle/Velocity,, San Francisco/YBCA, New York/NYLA, New York/American Realness, Hamburg/Kampnagel, Krems/donaufestival, Mannheim/Theater der Welt

Press

"A glorious mess that's shot through with enough rigor, humor, and heart to entertain and incite." - Aaron Scott, Portland Monthly Mag 

“Turbulence is one of the most incoherent, messy pieces I’ve ever seen. Yet... it keeps changing. There are often two or more things happening at once, and the spirit that emerges is funny, permissive, unsensational and inquiring.” - Alistair Macaulay, New York Times

“Turbulence (a dance about the economy) is a wreck that resembles a pop-up version of Occupy Wall Street. At any given moment in Turbulence, situations, both inconsequential and those charged with political meaning, erupt all over the stage.” - Gia Kourlas, New York Times

Turbulence is listed in critic's 2012 Top 10 Lists: Top 10 Dance, Rita Felciano, SF Bay Guardian; Best Ensemble 2012, Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian; Top 10 New York Theater, Don Shewey