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Too Squared - 4 minutes

2015 (work in progress)

Choreographed by: Joel Smith and Liz Casebolt - casebolt and smith

Performed by: Wendy Rein and Ryan Smith

 

Commissioned by: RAWdance Company, San Francisco

 

In Progress Premiere at Walking Distance Dance Festival, ODC Theater. June, 2015

 

casebolt and smith is actively working with RAWdance Company in San Francisco to develop a duet for Artistic Directors Wendy Rein and Ryan Smith.  RAWdance was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant to fund the commissioning of twelve artists to set new original work on the company. Other commissioned artists include Joe Goode, Ann Carlson, KT Nelson and Shinichi lova-Koga.  Casebolt and I developed the first version of “Too Squared” for RAWdance January 2015, and it was presented as part of the Walking Distance Dance Festival at ODC Theater in June 2015 as a work in progress.  We will work with RAWdance later this year to finish “Too Squared,” which will be presented alongside the work of the other eleven choreographers as an evening of work by ODC Theater in summer 2016.

 

"Too Squared" is a four-minute duet: two two-minute dances performed back to back.  The first half of the four-minute dance is an improvisational structure based on principals of leading and following, arriving and departing, responding only when your partner moves. It is slow, subtle, unexpected and should resist any fixed vocabulary.  The second half, just the opposite, is a fast-paced unison phrase that is maticulously crafted, virtuosic and requires great precision and execution. Like an art history exam where you are required to look at two slides side by side, so too is required for "Too Squared."  The second half immediately begins when the first half ends: Two unrelated pieces that relate only when side by side.

 

casebolt and smith were in residence with RAWdance Company in San Francisco at ODC for a week in January 2015. The Following two videos represent four days of rehearsal. 

 

First Half - improv

Second Half - unison phrase

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