project image
Anya Liftig
A VERY SOMETHING OR OTHER

first performed on September 6, 2014
New Museum, New York, NY
performed twice in 2014

ANYA LIFTIG

Brooklyn, NY
aliftig@gmail.com
anyaliftig.com

A VERY SOMETHING OR OTHER
ANYA LIFTIG

In “A Very Something or Other,” I explore the potential of the face as a terrain for choreography. My initial inspiration for this work came from an impulse to work on a smaller rather than larger scale. Since my youngest years, I have always been fascinated by the world of miniatures and practically obsessed with any cultural exploration of tiny. (I wrote my senior thesis on Jonathan Swift, and my Master’s thesis dealt in part with the miniature object as facsimile.) Part of my inspiration to make “micro” works came simply out of a very New York problem. I cannot afford studio space and therefore, much of this work has been created in the bathroom of the 375 sq ft apartment I share with my husband and my dog. At first I was skeptical that I would be able to create any type of “dance” using only my face, but after viewing the Charles and Ray Eames film, Powers of Ten, I resolved that my understanding of movement and space was only limited by my imagination and not by my physical surroundings. As in my live performance work, I set out to animate inanimate miniature objects. I birth a baby out of my mouth; a tampon erupts from my bloody nose; a pizza pie is randomly ejected; A tiny turkey takes flight. On stage, such minute movements are unable to reach the viewer. Via the camera, the viewer is able to engage with a micro world that challenges the boundaries of proportion and most ambitiously, perception. The central question of the work is: Can the face be a compelling and complete material for choreographic exploration? What are its boundaries and what is its potential for extending a collective notion of choreographic space?