Waver

• • 3ARTS MATCH
  • 111% contributed

Waver is a dance project about embracing loss. It’s about the dizzying moments of discovery when we realize that our mental maps have misled us—about our bodies, our culture, our world—and suddenly new spaces open up. Boundaries dissolve and materialize around and within us all the time. Even the act of walking redefines everything. And when we hug and walk together in a tight embrace, it yields a wavering mixture of simultaneous trust and doubt, a sweet little loss of self that morphs our understanding. Since fall 2016 I’ve been in the studio exploring with an ensemble the ways that two or more bodies can sometimes (but not entirely) become one, and we’ve gained a lot by embracing loss, letting boundaries crumble, cherishing awkwardness. Playing with partner work, we’ve patiently assembled a movement vocabulary and group chemistry that will help us build toward a run of evening-length performances at Defibrillator Gallery in late September 2017. While I’ve been making dances for more than a decade, most of my projects have been DIY endeavors. With this one I’m attempting work on a much more ambitious scale. Your support of Waver will be critical to helping me bring on collaborators for sound, video projection, costume/props, and other elements that will bring this project to life.

About This Project

Waver comes from a friction between very specific personal interests and more general questions about movement, engagement, belonging, and identity. It comes from my years of dancing butoh and my longer years of dancing tango. And it comes from a delicious and challenging paradox I find in both disciplines: the body has the greatest performative presence when our self-conscious will is absent.

My collaborators have backgrounds in tango, butoh, improvisation, ballet, salsa, music, and visual art. With extremely varied movement signatures, we make an enchantingly strange ensemble. Butoh is an art that values the uncanny, and Waver manifests that. And on a strangely coincidental personal note, it seems that my own body is acting this out: this year, with the project already well under way, I was diagnosed with MdDS, a rare neurological syndrome of perceived motion that makes me continuously feel as though the ground were rocking under me. Waver, indeed. Of course I’ll be dancing with it, learning from it, using it as material.

I’m glad to have had a sketchpad in the form of producing three work-in-progress performances in 2016 while in residency as a Sponsored Artist at High Concept Labs. The work was early in gestation, but sharing it with audiences helped me see where it could go further. Back in the studio, we devised movement explorations around the theme of personal space, using concepts from tango and butoh to question our assumptions and learn from “deliberate misunderstandings.” The simple challenge of two people moving with a shared axis yields infinite variations and opens analogies from the existential to the political. I’ve been delighted and honored to observe the grace, struggle, humor, and inventive brilliance of my collaborators: Mina Büker, Geoff Guy, Irene Hsiao, Alicia Obermeyer, Harlan Rosen, Jessica Saldaña, Pamela Stateman, and M Wu.

As a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, I have access to initial resources that will help me pay the ensemble members, but we still have many other expenses in order to bring this project to its fullest potential. Your donation will help us tackle specific production costs for our September performances. In addition to shaping and sequencing our movement material, I need to work with (and pay) a number of technical artists. I’ll hire a musician to help me develop the soundscape for the piece, which will weave in classic tango music (ghostly, nostalgic, but potent) along with other recorded and live elements. For the scenic design I’m planning simple but visually powerful video projections to highlight the uncanny and morphic qualities of our movement, and I’ll need the help of a video artist to create the format. We’ve been working with props and costuming that are in prototype form, and I’ll need the help of fabricators to bring these to full performative life. Your support will be crucial in helping the Waver project come to fruition. Thanks so much for giving what you can!

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $25
  Personal thank you on social media. ($25.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  Above, plus your name listed in the performance program. ($50.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  All of the above, plus a ten-second video posted on social media, personalized just for you, from our rehearsal process in the studio. ($100.00 is tax deductible.)
• $250
  All of the above, plus VIP seating for the performance night of your choice. ($250.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  All of the above, plus an art object for your collection: a unique handmade prop from the production. ($400.00 is tax deductible.)

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Carole McCurdy

Carole McCurdy is a Chicago-based artist whose work addresses grief and anxiety, duty and resistance, and the absurd mysteries of embodiment. She received a 2016 Lab Artist award from the Chicago Dancemakers Forum and was a Fall 2016 Sponsored Artist at High …

View Carole McCurdy's profile

• 3 updates
• 44 supporters

• Update 1: You Helped Us Make the 3Arts Match!

  Posted on June 04, 2017

   

  Your contributions helped us get to a third of our goal, and then 3Arts matched that third. And as of today we are now 72% of the way to our goal of $3600! Thank you so much for your support and interest in Waver. Tomorrow night we'll be back in the studio at Columbia Dance Center, and as we rehearse—as we slide, slump, stumble, and struggle into and out of connections and embraces—I will be reminding myself to mentally acknowledge the way you have embraced our work. Thanks again, and please spread the word! 

  Update 2: And now for the STRETCH GOAL!

  Posted on June 22, 2017

   

  STRETCH GOAL! Heartfelt thanks to all the wonderful, kind contributors who helped Waver reach its initial target. With time still on the clock and with an eye to the considerable production costs of mounting our performances, I’m now aiming for a stretch goal of $5,000. I'm so grateful for your support and interest in this project, and hope you'll spread the word! 

  Update 3: Success! Thanks for supporting WAVER!

  Posted on July 08, 2017

   

  Hurrah! With your kind support and a generous 1/3 match from 3Arts, we raised $4010 toward our production costs for WAVER. Your donations have opened up the creative possibilities for this project, and we heartily appreciate your help. Rewards (if you opted for them) will be on the way soon! Now we continue with the work of setting our sequences and planning the scenic and sonic components for our WAVER performance series at Defibrillator gallery: six nights only, September 15-16-17 and 21-22-23. See you there, and thanks again for becoming part of this work!

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

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