Presented in Gibney’s Work Up 3.3 in April 2017
Performers: Melanie Greene, Shiloh Hodges, Liz McAuliffe, and Zavé Martohardjono
Soundscape: Julia Santoli
Costumes: Zavé Martohardjono
Photos by Scott Shaw

GENERAL DYNAMICS 2.0 TRAILER

Your world is digitally generated, politically extremist, resource-depleted, selfie-obsessed, twerk-a-licious, and pushing at the margins of community sanity. Some might even say we no longer await the apocalypse. Welcome to GENERAL DYNAMICS 2.o — a “safe space” for somatic survival in the era of information overload. Join your hosts and work out your deepest socio-political anxieties and get the latest wellness tips. Our regimen is sure to help you survive xenophobia, gentrification, global warming, and other fatigue-inducing Amerikkkan phenomena.

GENERAL DYNAMICS 2.0 is a colorful, energetic, political tribute to disco and resilience. Made in 2017 through Gibney Dance’s Work Up 3.0 residency, this improvisation-based and group devised performance explores modern-day chaos and political extremism. I developed choreography and text with collaborators Liz McAuliffe, Shiloh Hodges, and Melanie Greene. Sound artist and musician Julia Santoli created the disco-infused cacophonous soundscape for performances.

The prompt I offered to collaborators was to consider the parallels between the election of Donald Trump and the white supremacist policies of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Together, we learned about the history of disco – a music and culture that arose from the Bronx and is a manifestation of the resilience of Black and Brown queer communities surviving in an economically devastated New York City.

GENERAL DYNAMICS 2.0 ends with a bang: we launch into fatigue-inducing aerobics, our most fabulous runway walks, an on-stage picnic, and chaotic readings to the audience of manifestos from contemporary anti-racist, feminist, and anti-capitalist movements.