Photo by Alex Escalante

ABOUT

Commentary = not thing is a dance play in two parts. This trio for two men and a woman prioritizes a more attentive and often aggressive relationship to the naked body, the functions of the body and the genitals. In an effort to expose the often chaotic and conflictual mode of communication among the group, the lone word or gesture sits next to the chunky dense repeating text. They crash and transform or don't go anywhere. The loss and arousal in this dysfunction creates a jagged and illegible terrain which makes a case for abstraction and its ability to communicate the expressive possibility of the emotional body and alternately, expose and lament its vast limitations.

Premiered at New York Live Arts

For more information on “Commentary = Not Thing,” including availability for touring and presentations, please email jfmdances@gmail.com. Tech rider and full length video available upon request.

CREDITS

Choreography and Direction: Juliana F. May
Performers: Benjamin Asriel, Kayvon Pourazr and Maggie Thom
Original Music: Chris Seeds
Lighting Design: Chloe Z. Brown
Costume Design: Reid Bartelme
Set Design: Brad Kisicki

“Commentary = Not thing” was made possible in part by a Process Space Residency on Governor's Island through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

PRESS

A Place Where Kitsch Gets All Dressed Up in Avant-Garde Clothing
Dance Review, Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times
“…a collage of dance and spoken theater, with several sequences of speech and movement obsessively recycled à la Gertrude Stein…The sense of multiple dramatic layers fascinates, the urgent rhythm excites and the three performers are excellent.”

THE ANIMALS WITHIN: DANCE REVIEW
Deborah Jowitt, Arts Journal
"May is suggesting that primal, pre-cognitive states stay buried in our guts; even as we’re growing up civilized, they’re howling and shitting at some level we fear to access."

VISCERA: DANCE REVIEW
Cassie Peterson, The Brooklyn Rail
"These are bodies before “appropriate” social conditionings. Bodies before “right” or “wrong.” Bodies beyond reproach and repression. Beyond shame. Beyond guilt. These are bodies uncensored."