Alexandra Shilling: EXIT STRATEGIES: ABSENCE: HISTORY

Alexandra Shilling (UC Los Angeles): $850 for EXIT STRATEGIES: an evening of new, interdisciplinary dance by Alexandra Shilling, Pivot point and ABSENCE: HISTORY. February Mini Grants

The artist will be completing two new dance works as part of her (and Carson Efird’s) third year MFA concert entitles EXIT STRATEGIES: ABSENCE: HISTORY is a new dance theatre piece whose process merges photography and movement, sourcing material from still images in an effort to fill in the spaces left open in her family’s war-torn history and the impossibility but necessity of the attempt. Audience and performers become detectives, piecing together fragmented stories through images, objects, text and film, allowing the stage to become a laboratory. Pivot point is an elegantly simple, 6-hour durational performance for UCLA’s Wilson Plaza that will change the way one views and experiences the plaza forever after.