FIVE DOMESTIC ACTS unfold inside a residential space in the form of five visual and performative on-site interventions . In a layered and progressive storytelling about womanhood and domesticity, five short intermittent dance pieces develop in various parts of the home and guide the audience into an immersive experience composed of video, text, garments, sound, edibles, collected objects and body movement. Over the course of the two hour production the audience is invited to explore the house and the exhibits, observe the action and be part of the intertwined stories that evolve primarily through movement, sound, dance and improv.
Scroll down for a brief description of each of the five acts. May 2019

Credits
Produced in collaboration with Lauren Daniluk.
Improv dance Victoria Dombroski and Heather Arnett directed by KristinDamrow&Company.
Durational piece performed by writer Jennifer Lee.
Wardrobe Archives contributors [see ACT 2 catalogue page 6&7].
Edibles by Karen Chae and Nelly Capra.
Hosted at the Christine Eggy Rose residency.
Event images by Kathy LaBarre.

ACT ONE

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER is a durational piece loosely based on the short story of the same title written by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892. The story is about a woman writer confined in a house, whose passion for writing is stifled by her misguided and distant husband. During an audio reading of the book, a performer erases parts of the text from the pages that form a wallpaper; what remains of the text focuses on the dynamics of the husband-wife relationship and illustrates the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. Parallel to the erasure process a dancer performs a short piece that explores alternative scenarios where the heroine breaks free from her mental and physical captivity.

ACT TWO

THE WARDROBE ARCHIVES features a collective exhibit that also becomes a space for a performance. Reminiscent of an archival collection, the display showcases personal and household items including books, garments, documents, flowers, toys, tools, laundry. The items chosen and contributed by over twenty women, represent individual perceptions and reflections on domesticity and womanhood. The audience is invited to shift through the contents of the wardrobe while a performer - who takes the role of the woman as the homemaker - explores the emotions and reflects upon the mundane acts associated with this space.

ACT THREE

THE KITCHEN DIARIES involves two dancers who explore aspects of the kitchen space and the actual homemaking process by incorporating the kitchen area, tools and edible items into a dance improvisation piece. The performers take their cues from a 50’s instructional cooking soundtrack and respond to it in ways that illustrate a range of motions and emotions caused by the laborious acts of homemaking and provoked by a stern instructional male voice. Their act concludes with a choreographed arrangement of a dinner table with a food display available for consumption and shared by the audience.

ACT FOUR

A BALANCED LIFE is the fourth act and originates from an earlier series of photographs and drawings titled “the balancing acts”. The various iterations of these works examine the relationship of human body and architecture, specifically the female body in the domestic environment. The chest of drawers is an object that appears often in these pieces signaling the presence of secretive teritorries and standing as a symbol of a functional and disciplined domesticity. In the performative version of these works, a series of balancing acts are executed on a wooden piece of furniture while the performer wears a wood patterned apron that acts as a disguise, a barrier or a merger of body, object and space.

ACT FIVE

ACT FIVE involves two highly dynamic instances where the performer engages with two dominant objects in the domestic topography; the bed and the chair. Focused here, too, are the tensions of domestic life, a theme explored in all the sections of this work. The chair is explored as a symbol of both confinement and power and the bed as the area that signifies various states of body and mind awareness. The dancer actively embraces these dual relationships in a physical and emotional way while using the objects’s structural qualities as extensions and reflections of her body.