ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES, Knife/Tape/Rope:
Ishmael Houston-Jones presents outtakes from his 1989/90 collaboration with Dennis Cooper (text) and John B. Walker (performer) Knife/Tape/Rope. Based on a true story of midwestern teenagers who murdered their friend and sacrificed his body to Satan at the Well of Hell; Cooper’s text combines his predilection for the macabre with his wry humor. Houston-Jones’s dances are not an illustration of the text, but rather an amplification of the dark mood of the narrative.

For this presentation of Knife/Tape/Rope Houston-Jones has extracted the dances and confessions of the perpetrators and moved the setting to a high school assembly, as a “cautionary tale” for young people who might listen to Metal and smoke dope. Performing in this reworking of the piece are Jeremy Pheiffer, Robert Maynard and Gillian Walsh.

YVONNE MEIER, Mad Heidi:
Mad Heidi is a portrait of a Swiss woman, battling against her Swiss expectations. Lifelong traumas like, "how many times must I hike up the mountain?" surface. A sexy witch-like broom dance becomes unavoidable. Consumed by equal parts madness, rage, and sadness, Heidi descends into the netherworld of the collective unconscious in order to ferociously and boisterously destroy Swiss stereotypes and clichés. The work evokes is a sense of homesickness and longing as the performer appears alone before her audience -- naked, both inside and out.

“A true east village renegade with a special talent for creating havoc…” Gia Kourlas, The New York Times