Soaking WET is a series of choreographic evenings curated by David Parker, whose company, David Parker and The Bang Group has been the first and only resident-dance company of the West End Theatre since January 2003. Parker is committed to bringing together artists of varied backgrounds and levels of experience in order to break down aesthetic barriers and achieve mutual inspiration.
Program A: ELLIS WOOD and Dancers
Premiere of Earthbound, created by Wood and dancers Chelsea Hecht, Alexandra Lockhart, and Emily McDaniel, three graduates from SUNY Purchase. The work is the first in a new initiative designed by Wood to support emerging female choreographer/dancers. Participants are provided with rehearsal space, rehearsal pay, choreographers' fees, music, costumes, set, performance venue, lighting and tech, allowing the artists to focus solely on their craft. Earthbound, set to a music collage, has dancers creating various spaces by moving structures to form pathways, rooms and surfaces. Within these boundaries, they explore physical and emotional states of being, such as heaviness, ecstasy, and confusion.
Program B: ERIKA BATDORF and KATE DIGBY
Directed and choreographed by Kate Digby and written by Erika Batdorf, The Red Horse is Leaving is inspired by the journals of Thaya Whitten, a Nova Scotian painter, performance artist and musician. The work gives the audience an intimate view of someone who is plagued (or blessed) by visions, and struggles to distinguish inspiration from delusion. Along this journey we watch and intensely painful and joyful battle with drugs, addition, isolation, and manic-depression in the pursuit of something beautiful. A "gargoyle," played by Kate Gordon, haunts the painter's studio wearing a spine with lighting responding to Batdorf's breathing and heart rate.
