The American Sun

A choreographic investigation into themes of revolution, image, rhythm, vista, filigree, mystery/history, and the end of the American empire.
“The American Sun” uses Bob Kaufman’s prophetic poem as the foundational text to sift through the choreographic artefacts of a crumbling and dying empire-- the textual cadences of a political manifesto, mystical vision, and intimate conversation collide and refract one another, combining fugal choreographic structures with rhythmic stretching and collapsing. This investigation of rhythm and the multiple historical, ideological, political, and spiritual planes in which rhythm operates asks: What does the rhythm of revolutionlook and feel like? How do the intersecting planes in which rhythm operates--historical, ideological, political, spiritual--form, congeal and shatter our identities, making way for new forms of life?
A filigree of tempos emerges from the dance and offers us the elaborated forms of attention necessary to find our way.

“Every culture is first and foremost a particular experience of time, and no new culture is possible without an alteration in this experience. The original task of a genuine revolution, therefore, is never merely to 'change the world', but also - and above all - to 'change time'.”
― Giorgio Agamben




Directed by Maya Lee-Parritz

Featuring
Tim Bendernagel
Rachel Gill
Cayleen Del Rosario
Gwendolynn Knapp
Patty Lin
Owen Prum
Anna Therese Witenberg

Photographic installation : Sadaf Azadehfar

Additional music: Russell O'Rourke


This work was supported by a City Corps Artist Grant, and developmental residencies at KinoSaito and Baryshnikov Arts Center.


MAYA LEE-PARRITZ