To The Things Themselves! explores an engagement with the performance moment in and of itself, while also exposing the cultural situated-ness of the performance actions. Movement, music materials, and actual physical objects are manipulated to at times emphasize their in-and-of-themselves object-ness, while at other times transforming into blatant representations: the stick becomes a sword, then a cane (stealing from Improv 101 beginning dance students).
With music by James Lo and performance by Neil Greenberg, Michael Ingle, Kyli Kleven and Omagbitse Omagbemi, To The Things Themselves! proposes that an experience of “the thing itself” necessarily includes the conditions of a phenomenon’s production and reception, both.
