Force Fields: A Collaborative Dance Performance

Monday Feb. 25th, @7pm, minicine? will host "FORCE FIELDS" a collaborative dance performance created and produced by artists Ru Emmons and H. Gene Thompson. The duo uses movement and wearable sculptures to perform transformations and protection routines seeking ways to unstick themselves in a physical and energetic way. Using imagery of portals and transformations, the performers work towards a reclamation of personal power. They explore the human response to living in and around the poisons of capitalism, environmental destruction, and systemic oppression.

Emmons and Thompson are interested in exploring themes of land, water and the dangerous isolation they see humans experiencing in the world.Their work is actively questioning how to regain our “force fields” and reclaim personal power. This is a story of adaptation, grief, protection and transformation in an age of fear. In a world where religion has co-opted spirituality, our creative energy lives in danger of being lost.

What factors constrain us from freedom? How do our bodies mirror our environment? How do we move forward in power together? Gene and Ru seek to open these questions and their complex solutions in this traveling performance piece.

Suggested Donation $5!

H. GENE THOMPSON is an artist who uses soft sculpture installation and performance to highlight unseen narratives and to explore themes of closeness, isolation, confining factors such as gender, social and economic oppression. Thompson’s wearable work is made up of colorful shapes working both as membranes to be resisted against and barriers to be broken through, both separating and connecting people, questioning human connectivity through wearable fabric sculptures. They are interested in bringing people together through inclusive events and performances in support of people who do not see themselves represented in the media bring work that is open for interpretations and speaks to the ideas of the “other”.
Thompson works to hold space that acts as a conduit for social emotional learning, they have been responsible for public works at: New Hazlett Theater, The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Kelly Strayhorn Pittsburgh, Laboratory Spokane WA, Charles Adams Studio Project Lubbock TX, AS220 Providence RI, Neu Kirche Contemporary Art Center, and Future Tenant Pittsburgh. BFA 2012, CMU.

RU EMMONS is a movement artist who strives to use their body as a tool for social change and personal transformation. Their movement style provides alternative ways to be human by engaging athletic contortion, humor, and contemporary improvisational methods to create images of connectivity, discovery, and dysphoria. Emmons explores what it means to be “the other” by testing their own physical limits, curiously investigating the world around them, and transforming body into object and object into body. Their work deals with themes of queerness, living in a poison world, and apocalyptic alternatives. Emmons has performed and collaborated with slowdanger, Dave Bernabo, and H. Gene Thompson at venues including the New Hazlett Theater, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, 937 Gallery, and Wood Street Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA. Their work is further documented at ruemmons.com/art.