Photo by Alex Escalante

ABOUT

In Adult Documentary five performers share their real and imagined histories. The distortion of text and body attempts to address the relationship between form and trauma or conversely the trauma of form. How does the so-called “aboutness” and shape of a word or gesture disrupt meaning and how does the form i.e., repetition, space and time rupture or repair these seemingly hermetic relationships.

Premiered at The Chocolate Factory

For more information on Adult Documentary, including availability for touring and presentations, please email jfmdances@gmail.com.

CREDITS

Choreography and Direction: Juliana F. May
Text: Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein, Juliana F. May, Rennie McDougall, Kayvon Pourazar and Connor Voss
Performers: Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein, Rennie McDougall, Kayvon Pourazar and Connor Voss
Original Music: Chris Seeds
Lighting Design: Chloe Z. Brown
Costume Design: Mariana Valencia
Set Design: Sara C. Walsh

Juliana May researched, developed and honed “Adult Documentary” with financial, administrative and residency support from The MAP Fund, supported by the Dorris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Gibney Dance's Dance in Process Residency, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Jerome Foundation.

PRESS

Shifting Shape in January: Day 5 Dispatch (AR Talk, Juliana May, Ni’Ja Whitson & Wendell Cooper)
Maura Donahue, CULTUREBOT
"As the gears wind, reset, accumulate, wind again, reset, accumulate and alter, reset and so on, the dancers spring in and out of action and text that is interspersed with vocal yelps in place of certain words...The overall effect is dizzying. In recall, I imagine us moving instead of them as if we were on a revolving stage circling past an anthropological exhibit of Young Urbans (native habitat), early 21st Century."

In Performance – Juliana F. May, Adult Documentary
Stephen Eckert, Contemporary Performance
"a collision of text and movement with playfulness and eroticism running throughout, bringing to mind at times both the casual confidence of pre or post orgy discussion and the hollow emotion of group therapy...Adult Documentary is an intelligent exploration of language and form, inhabiting a space of friction between the two."

Review: 'Adult Documentary' is Dense and Dificult, Including the Carpet
Dance Review, Gia Kourlas, The New York Times
“Alongside yelps, there are simple, raw moves like the wheelbarrow or crawls on the floor embellished with lifts of elbows and knees that flap briskly to the side. As always, Ms. May shows an admirable handle on structure, but the characters inside of her carefully delineated patterns are inconsistent; in this experiment, that’s obviously part of the point..."

Juliana F. May's 'Adult Documentary'
Eva Yaa Assantewaa, InfiniteBody Blog
"May's concern with "the form of trauma" and "the trauma of form" takes clear shape as other dancers--Lindsay Clark, Talya Epstein and Rennie McDougall--complete the picture. What ensues next looks like a court dance staged inside a massive cuckoo clock--impersonal, cyclical movements neatly efficient, athletic, mechanically synchronized; the regular, clicking or striding rhythms; the repeated lines of text that hint at a story before spraying it with buckshot. Sharp barks replace words at frustrating places, making you wonder. Nudity, full and partial, insinuates something, falling short of declaration. Periodic variations on things you come to expect keep you off guard."