Fidget has been invited to perform Dust at the international tanzmesse nrw.
Time expands, narrative shimmers forth and slips away; formalism meets humanity in Fidget’s staging of Robert Ashley’s experimental opera Dust. Working with the original recording and a cast of five dancers, director/choreographer Megan Bridge cultivates a shifting performance landscape that builds, swells, loops back and comments on itself.
Bridge weaves movement that sometimes skates on top, sometimes intersects, and sometimes rides the wave of Ashley’s score. Movement and voice vacillate between a delivery that is muttered then precise, pedestrian then virtuosic. The work’s complex musicality and surreal narrative carry a strangely ebullient and humorous tone despite subject matter that includes war and a drug-induced conversation with God. An homage to minimalism is evident in the work (Bridge’s choreographic mentor for the project was Lucinda Childs), yet is tempered by an improvisatory, somatic approach to movement generation that is inspired by working with Deborah Hay. Video design by Peter Price creates a colorfield effect that breathes with the dance.