it’s been awhile

I haven’t written anything on this blog in awhile. Jon Moniaci and I had our show BOREDOM!!! (as an amplifier). It was received well and got some nice press. Gia Kourlas at Time Out New York wrote a great preview of the show. It is well worth the read. Claudia La Rocco at The New York Times wrote a nice review. Here is a short excerpt:

“New Yorkers do impatience like pros. Boredom, not so much; the city’s denizens are far too overstimulated and attention-fractured to approach anything like the drifty languor of this underestimated state.

But it’s the rare artist who can create worthwhile work without healthy doses of it. In their illuminating new duet, Boredom!!! (as an amplifier),the choreographer Chase Granoff and the composer Jon Moniaci cultivate a little square of boredom, and invite audiences in for the nonride.”

Also on the Movement Research Critical Correspondence Forum there was a mention and I guess a short discussion of our show.

Jon and I recently showed a video excerpt of the show and gave out mix cds at Food For Thought at Danspace Project at St Marks Church. I wrote a short statement about our use of the word boredom for the cd insert.

Our Thoughts On Boredom.

The use of boredom in our titles refers to work that does not attempt to entertain. Boredom is thought of as an active place of thought and contemplation. By titling our work boredom we do not claim the work to be boring but rather is an investigation into a specific passing and development of time. Boredom is seen by us as a place of production. It is not a static state but rather something more along the lines of feedback. The use of boredom allows for discussion in regards to the performance and content of the performance. Boredom is a slowing down of time, an opening of space that allows for interpretation and possibility.

Here is some other text and quotes from others I included in the insert.

Some info on boredom from WIKIPEDIA.

The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, written in 1852.

Time often seems to move more slowly to someone who experiences boredom.

Boredom also plays a role in existentialist thought. Without stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with nothingness, the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential anxiety. Martin Heidegger states this idea nicely: “Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole.”

from The Open by Giorgio Agamben.

“profound boredom as a fundamental emotional tonality,,, or the animal’s relationship with it’s environment, man’s relationship with his world… World-framing… poverty in the world.”

BOREDOM!!! (as an amplifier) is over now at least until we go to Berlin in late August.

all photos by Alex Escalante.