ENCOUNTER

8 minutes

photos: © Bruno Chalifour

PHOTOGRAPHER: Bruno Chalifour

CHOREOGRAPHER: Missy Pfohl Smith

COMPOSER: O'Neill Haynes

SET DESIGN: Bruno Chalifour and Missy Pfohl Smith

DANCERS: Courtney Andrews, Kelly Ferris, Stacy Pottinger,
Missy Pfohl Smith, Stuart Tsubota, and Christina Walsh

MUSICIANS: TBA

Encounter consists of a live performance combining dance, music, and photography. The project addresses the strong metaphoric potential of the three media. The genesis of the project was found in the natural world, how various plants share the same space, grow, and establish physical relationships between them, sometimes symbiotically living off each other, sometimes growing either in spite, or at the expense of each other. The physicality of the natural world is observed and infused with human meaning through photography. The metaphoric space thus created is reinterpreted, and redeveloped by the choreography. Both natural and human movements are then transposed into a third medium, music. The final creation combines the three approaches, each taking the original experience one step further away from nature, transposing it into cultural, estheticized content.