SAFE SPACE is a special staging of a song from Site-Specific Dances collaborator Darian Donovan Thomas’ upcoming album A Room With Many Doors.
SETTING
Set in a mature grove of redwood trees endangered by increasingly deadly wildfires, two dancers strap hand-held cameras to their bodies and capture the site through their movement. They also capture footage of each other, an intimate interaction performed without touching. The footage they capture, through movement, is spatialized to create a video ‘set’ for live performance that extends Darian Donovan Thomas’ plea for a ‘safe space’ to the increasingly vulnerable natural world.
DUETS
In the sense that a duet is a performance for two, the immersive media staging presents intersecting layers of ‘duets’, interactions between:
- humans and endangered nature (site)
- two queer bodies (identity)
- technology and the body (the posthuman)
- recorded dance and live dance (multimedia performance)
MUSIC AND LYRICS: Darian Donovan Thomas: “Safe Space”
VIDEO/STAGING CONCEPT: Dino Kiratzidis, Michael Spencer Phillips
Performed live at S-SD Inaugural Season, Paul Taylor Dance Studios, NYC
April 6, 2023
FULL TEAM:
Director: Michael Spencer Phillips Choreographer: Michael Spencer Phillips Original Music: “Safe Space” Darian Donovan Thomas Immersive Environment: Dino Kiratzidis Still Camera and Editing: Emma Kazaryan Handheld Cameras / On-screen Dancers: Michael Spencer Phillips, Jaime Garcia-Castilla Live Dancers: local casting.