Projects and Collaborations
Biba Bell: Cities of the Interior
Biba Bell's Cities of the Interior is a dance about how bodies fit into temporal structures that act like live dermal archives of family, past, and conceptions of home. Propelled by the desire for intimacy during the early pandemic’s structures of isolation, Bell reached out to friends, artists, and collaborators around the country and world, inviting them to share a window into their dreamscape. Many stories, poems, dances, drawings, and texts were shared, creating a dream archive of this time. The dance relates to these fragments while inviting dancers Christopher Woolfolk and Shannon White to consider their own dream-world-making and somnambulist practices.
The dance uses large folds of fabric, designed in collaboration with Julio Efrain Dominguez, which act as a dermal layer to augment the performers’ bodies and connect to each other and the space. My original live electroacoustic musical accompaniment evokes a space between waking/dream/memory through improvised percussion digitally processed and blended with lush and eerie electronic textures.
This piece was originally premiered at Gallery Camille (Detroit, MI) in Summer of 2021. It was performed with Daher's original music at a 3-evening run at Roulette Intermedium (Brooklyn, NY) in June of 2022. Check the News section for details about upcoming performances in 2023.