Visiting Artist | January 8-21, 2017
The Three Matadores
For their first MANCC residency, Lin Hixson (Director) and Matthew Goulish (Dramaturg) of Every house has a door worked to finalize their piece, The Three Matadores, in preparation for its March 11-12, 2017 premiere at the Logan Center, University of Chicago, as part of the OnEdge Festival. The work is inspired by a microplay, embedded in a book-length poem The Presentable Art of Reading Absence (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008) by American poet, Jay Wright. The Three Matadores micro-play, which has never before been staged, will constitute the second act of the two-act performance. The first act features solos by four artists that sets the stage for the second act, which brings the four together in the staging of Wright's play, a bilingual English and Spanish text whose choreography alternates between mathematical permutations and movements based on bullfighting.
While at MANCC, Hixson and Goulish examined bullfighting, specifically its structure and choreography as they relate to the work. While in residence MANCC staff connected Goulish and Daddario with Dr. Neil Arditi, The Esther Raushenbush Chair of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College, to discuss the theme and context of Jay Wright’s work. In the second week of the residency, lighting designer, Michael Schnelling, joined the team to begin working on the scenic and technical elements of the performance. FSU School of Dance student, Ross Daniel (3rd year MFA), participated in the residency as a rehearsal assistant.
The residency culminated in an informal work-in-progress showing and discussion, attended by graduate and undergraduate students of the Schools of Dance and Theater, as well as faculty members from English, Modern Languages, and Theater departments.
As a part of MANCC’s Embedded Writers Initiative, Hixson and Goulish and their collaborators were joined by writer and performance philosopher Will Daddario who continued his research on this project. Daddario contributed an essay to accompany the performance, entitled “Concentrated, polysemous, literary act’: Every house has a door reads Jay Wright’s Three Matadores Play.” This initiative, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is designed to support the re-imagining of dance writing conventions in order to better respond to and engage with a wider range of ever-evolving contemporary forms in dance and performance.
Collaborators in Residence: Sebastián Calderón Bentin, Stephen Fiehn, Tim Kinsella, Anna Martine Whitehead [Performers], Christine Shallenberg [Technical Director] and Michael Schmelling [Lighting Designer], Will Daddario [Writer]
Maggie Allesee
