Shadow of the Sea, performance commission
presented by The Kitchen & Madison Square Park Conservancy
September 21, October 12 & October 20, 2022
https://thekitchen.org/event/beau-bree-rhee-shadow-of-the-sea
https://madisonsquarepark.org/community/calendar/event/beau-bree-rhee-shadow-of-the-sea/
“A partnership between The Kitchen and Madison Square Park Conservancy brings live performance outside the walls of The Kitchen and into the public space of the park, creating new opportunities for dialogue and exchange among artists, publics, and landscape. Arising out of this partnership is the premiere of a new performance project by Beau Bree Rhee, Shadow of the Sea, conceived in dialogue with Cristina Iglesias’s exhibition Landscape and Memory at Madison Square Park.
Rhee’s work Shadow of the Sea opens with a question: The sea covers 71% of our planet: and its shadow? Composed as a “dance poem,” the performance has eight stanzas, each with vastly differing qualities. An ensemble of dancers will begin the first section on the east and west coasts of Manhattan, performing a migratory score—a Brutal Meditation—that traces where the sea may eventually reclaim the land within the next hundred years. The following seven stanzas—including a Blues, an X, an Insurrection, a Loss—take place on the Oval Lawn in Madison Square Park, where Iglesias’s installation of five bronze sculptural pools traces a historic creek. Here, Shadow of the Sea further expresses “the shadow” within contemporary life, probing the social, historical, and philosophical dimensions of this concept.
The piece is created through multi-layered research into scientific maps projecting future coastlines; historical maps of Indigenous pathways in New York City; Indigenous spiritual beliefs; recordings of land that Rhee stewards as an earth work; and poems and songs on ecology and justice, particularly the books Poésie Perdue (published in 2000) by French writer Paul Valéry and 님의 침묵 The Silence of Nim (published in 1926) by Korean writer and activist Manhae (Han Yong-un). These associations coalesce in Rhee’s choreographic language for engaging the body with land and atmosphere.
*Prior to the performance in Madison Square Park at 6pm, Shadow of the Sea begins with Coastal Walks at 5pm simultaneously on the east and west sides of Manhattan.”
Ensemble: Bria Bacon, Chaery Moon, Cara McManus, Beau Bree Rhee & Caitlin Scranton.
Curatorial Team: Alison Burstein & Angelique Rosales Salgado.
Postcard design by Chloé Maës & Mimi Guan.
The photographs below are from September 21, 2022. They document the West Side Coastal Walk & the performance in the park. Further documentation will be available soon, with views of the East Side Coastal Walk & the other two performances.
Full credits in image descriptions (hover).
Photographs by Walter Walter Wlodarczyk & Rashmi Gill
