Use Your Senses: Listen, Look, Touch, Try

These events challenge us to think about bodies and objects in relation, how we move through space together, and how we think about space itself differently in the heightened stakes of performance. Typically, performance foregrounds the bodies and presence of performers, often letting spectators comfortably disappear into the darkness of the audience and anonymity. These events remind us, in a variety of ways, of our own embodied presence, sharing space with others.

Pirates and the whisper opera put spectators onstage alongside performers.  John Zorn, Morton Subotnick, and DJ Spooky challenge us to listen differently. The artists in Joshua Light Show and Mette Ingvartsen’s 7 Pleasures dwell in the pleasures of movement, in which the limits of the body become blurred.  And AUNTS, Gala and Lost Landscapes of New York create opportunities for audiences to interact with — or star in! — performances.