Kinetic Light Dance Company presents 'Wired' at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, with music by Ailís Ní Ríain

5 May 2022 20:00 - 8 May 2022 16:00

Edlis Neeson Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Photo: Robbie Sweeny/Kinetic Light.

The Performance

Wired is an immense and intimate experience that traces the fine line between “us” and “them” through aerial and contemporary dance and the metaphoric use of barbed wire. The dancers of Wired spin and soar together in this meditation in sound, light, and movement on the gendered, racial, and disability stories of barbed wire in the United States, showing how this material shapes common understandings of who belongs. Barbed wire is designed as a material for containment. It is used, time and again, to limit individual and community movements and delineate boundaries as large as a nation state and as small as a personal fence. In Wired, this fraught material comes to highlight not only danger and contradiction, but also beauty and interconnection.

To create Wired, the artists of Kinetic Light—Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson, Jerron Herman, and Michael Maag—and their collaborators—composers Ailís Ní Ríain and LeahAnn Mitchell and scenic designer Josephine Shokrian—defy both gravity and assumptions about what dance can be. The artists of Kinetic Light see interdependence as a political position as well as an approach to making dance from a disability aesthetic: in which disability is a powerful creative and cultural force, and the many ways of accessing the performance are the art itself.

Composer's Note

In 1874, Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois received a patent for “The Winner,” with its twisting entwinement of three metal strands it became the most widely produced model of barbed wire in the United States. Beyond its racial implications, barbed wire has also historically administered the involuntary segregation of disabled people from the rest of society, often demarcating the perimeters of institutions and representing various forms of cultural and societal othering, separation, confinement, or control.

Wired is a long-form disabled-led work which honours histories of race, gender, and disability in America through an exploration of barbed wire. The project has been in development since 2018 when I was first approached by Alice Sheppard, the founder and artistic director of Kinetic Light dance company in New York. Alice became aware of my music through a commission which was supported in the UK by Unlimited [https://weareunlimited.org.uk/].

When a new production of a play of mine opened in New York in 2019 I met up with Alice in person to discuss what I could bring as a composer to the Wired narrative vision. In the Autumn of 2019 I joined Kinetic Light for a residency at Jacob’s Pillow, Massachusetts to being to develop a sonic language for Wired which was initially centered around what I call the ‘pencil piano’, a form of prepared-piano which I had been developing for a few years. Working in this way has been a refreshing change and my first time composing for dance. Wired has enabled me, as a composer, to create a sonic environment for moving bodies in space held by a provocative and challenging narrative framework, aerial performance and meticulously detailed lighting design.

As for many of us, the pandemic prevented me from re-joining the company in person as planned in 2020, however they formed a ‘bubble’ and worked intensely in San Francisco during the pandemic while I contributed remotely in response to shared video rehearsals, photos, texts, zoom calls and email exchanges. Just as Wired challenges us to view barbed wire differently, so too does this production challenge conventions of dance and aesthetics through the lens of disability. The work opens in Chicago on 5th May 2022 and transfers to The Shed, New York in Autumn 2022.

- Ailís Ní Ríain

Accessibility

ASL interpretation and AD are available for all shows. There is no spoken dialogue in Wired. Audio description is available through Kinetic Light's app, Audimance. More information will be provided to ticketholders by email in advance. Orientation to and demonstration of the app will be available in the lobby prior to all shows, along with a tactile exhibit that serves as an introduction to the Wired set, props, costumes, and theatrical elements. Wired content and artistry will remain the same for all performances. The show shares many aspects of MCA's Relaxed Performances. Audience members are welcome to exit and reenter. Light haze is present in certain sections. There are no strobe lighting effects. Quiet spaces and stimulation kits are available for all performances.

The show will be livestreamed on Saturday, including ASL, with one channel being audio described. Friday and Sunday’s performances will offer an alternative lighting design.