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.

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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.

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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.

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Agon and the Animal is a performance project directed by Kristen Lewis, in collaboration with dance artists, Avery Smith and Lucas Wilson-Bilbro.

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Presented at The Dance Centre, October 2019.