'Gravity (and other large things.)' October 12, 2012

Fri/Sat, Oct 12/13 at 8pm, Sun, Oct 14 at 4pm, Fri/Sat, Oct 19/20 at 8pm, Sun, Oct 21 at 4pm

Right Brain Performancelab has created another darkly comic dance-theatrical vision with found images, sounds and true events that are stranger than fiction. "Gravity (and other large things.)" is a love letter to the strangely weak force that anchors people, beings and objects firmly on the earth and the contrary desire of human beings to leave the ground.

Welcome to a universe in which all things repeatedly fall, bounce and rise up again. While hearts may be light, human bodies feel heavy. Six performers rise up and drop down as if to ask whether the fall is inevitable and the recovery possible. Weight, in this piece, has parallels with age, responsibility and the sum of life's experiences. The company plays with ideas from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, in which weight and lightness are metaphors for the relative meaninglessness of a person's experiences. In this show, the company also draws deep and funny parallels between earthly and heavenly bodies. The Performancelab explores gravity's literal effects and the personal and political metaphors that emerge from those experiments, as well as mathematical equations and models. They wrap it up and present it as a blend of vaudevillian physical and movement theater, text, object manipulation, mime, clowning, vocal experimentation and songs that explore how justice, entropy, resilience and fifty-two-pickup interact when thrown together and examined closely.

This full-length performance event features John Baumann, Lisa Claybaugh, Jennifer Gwirtz, Laura Marsh, Jennifer Minore, Patrick Simms, a rubber chicken and thirty eight ping pong balls. Also featured is the work of composer Dave Rodgers and lighting designer Allen Willner.

Official Website: http://performancelab.org/