…AND SMELL THE ROSES

2019
Performance Installation
Collaboration with Jenna Pollack and Hubbard Street Professional Program

This collaborative performance transformed a gallery exhibition into a heist. As dancers entertained and distracted the audience, paintings appeared to be stolen, leaving empty gold frames behind.

Blurring the boundaries between exhibition, theater, and audience participation, the work invited viewers to move from observers to participants, becoming part of the unfolding narrative rather than simply observing it.

Gallery

About the Project

Around this time I had become fascinated by contemporary dance and its ability to communicate through movement rather than words. Collaborating with choreographer Jenna Pollack and the dancers of the HS Pro program became an opportunity to ask whether a gallery exhibition could become an event viewers experienced rather than just observed.

As the performance unfolded, the paintings of flowers disappeared from their frames. Because viewers had encountered the paintings prior to the performance, the empty frames held both what was missing and the memory of what had just been there.

This experience affirmed that the idea of absence was important to me and a direction I should investigate. The “empty” works felt more charged and interesting to me and I realized they were capable of carrying meaning in and of themselves. These questions directly inform my work today.

Credits

Choreography
Jenna Pollack

Performed by
Hubbard Street Professional Program

Video
Sam Cejtin & Ben Hood

Music
Peace Pilgrim

Additional Collaborators
Alexandra Wells
Ben Hood
Local Wiring Co.
Malora Pollack
Bill Pollack
Chicago Art Department
Peter Hinsdale
Jeffrey Barber (Bulb and Thistle)