Animal and the Agon | Kristen Lewis
In pursuit of some answers to the question: why do ‘we’ (a Western ‘we’) abhor nature?, Agon and the Animal examines the roots of the “flight from nature” in the common experience of being subject to a mother, and indeed to matter itself.
"Agony and the Animal" is an experiment in how words and concepts inform the body's trajectories through space and history, and how the body/ies' trajectories in turn create new conceptual apparatus, including new modes of being-in language--shaping a future that is truly new.
Agon and the Animal is, at its heart, an invitation to an adventure, unfolding on the precipices of ever-new thresholds, where performing bodies discover, through the process of their own perpetual becoming, emergent truths about the possibilities of love, friendship and community built on the ashes of a culture with a deeply troubled, often denied relationship to maternity, to matter, and to nature.
The research for this work began in the late spring of 2019 in Vancouver, and unfolded through time together in the studio moving to a verbal/conceptual score Kristen created based on deep theoretical reflection, reading, writing, and personal solo-improvisational dance work. The work deepened through a 4-day residency in Victoria, B.C. in August 2019, and continues.
This work is part of a bigger multidisciplinary, dance-based project involving an eventual hybrid performance in the summer of 2020, supported by collaborative research with dance artists, performance artists, and theorists.
Agon and the Animal is a performance project directed by Kristen Lewis, in collaboration with dance artists, Avery Smith and Lucas Wilson-Bilbro.
Presented at The Dance Centre, October 2019.