RED BIND / GILIVANKA KEDZIOR & BARBARA FRIEDMAN

Two women, totally blinded by black hoods, are both connected to a pole by a long red ribbon attached to a collar around their necks. For nearly an hour, they rotate in passing each other, until the whole ribbon is wound around the pole.

This performance is inspired by the Maypole Dance, a form of folk dance from Western Europe still widely distributed nowadays. The origin of the Maypole Dance began in ancient Babylon during fertility rites. Its symbolism has been continually debated for centuries, although no set conclusion has ever been arrived at.

Here, detached from its festive scope, it opens up to various readings: by turns fateful dance, endless ritual procession, or metaphor of an animal convolution. The performative act takes on a penitential dimension. It experiences the limits of resistance of a body in a position of constriction and sensory deprivation, submitted to repetitive action. Paradoxically, it also experiments with the anesthetic effect of this same obsessive movement. It analyzes the relationship to the other one, the inability/difficulty in communicating the enduring body and its subdivision through time.

Also performed on the beach, in Half Moon Bay, CA.