Keely Garfield
Perfect Piranha

DATE/TIME/TICKETS

November 29 – December 9, 2017
Wednesdays thru Fridays at 8pm
Saturday December 2 at 6:30pm
Saturday December 9 at 6:30pm and 9pm

Perfect Piranha moves in circles through ineffable strands of shady movement to fully-articulated declarative dancing. It emerges as an uninterrupted flow of continuous movement, veering between a whisper and a roar. Perfect Piranha gives sway to mixed emotions, evaporating patterns, and exclamatory physicality with vaudevillian flourishes. The dance concludes in an immaculate outpouring – Mandala – a dance within a dance. Mandala is an extraordinarily intricate ascending spiral that serves as soulful completion.

Perfect Piranha is choreographed by Keely Garfield. Garfield is joined in performance by Bessie awarded dancers Molly Lieber and Raja Feather KellyBessie nominated Paul Hamilton, and newcomer Emma Rose Brown. Lighting design is by Madeline Best. Sound is both recorded and live, with many of the elements generated by the performers, invoking near and far, past and present.

Winston Churchill said, “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.” What can be expressed is simple. What cannot be expressed is most urgent. What if there are no words yet for what we are living through? Meaning accrues – intonation, accumulation of speed, diminishing space, hate speech, embodied listening, sublime utterance – who are we now? I hit you and you hit me is one way to communicate. Inchoate and tentative, we turn away. A Piranha’s teeth are serrated, sharp as blades, and ideal for shearing and tearing flesh. A veneered smile is heralded as indication of how smart and happy a person is. Let’s turn back, reach deep into our subterranean hearts, and remember who we can be. Imagine a piranha’s strong jaw and teeth closing in, and turn towards this awareness. Snap! Wake up! We struggle with what we have made. Let’s start over. Compassionate and in accord, we turn…

None of us can do this alone.

Choreography: Keely Garfield. Dancers: Keely Garfield, Paul Hamilton, Raja Feather Kelly, and Emma Rose Brown. Lighting Design: Madeline Best.

“Her Lips Are Blue, Her Dances Unpredictable” – Brian Seibert, New York Times (PDF)

“Giving Thanks For Dance” – Martha Sherman, dancelog.nyc

“Remembrance of Vaudevilles Past” – Leigh Witchel, dancelog.nyc