“Reality Flux” was created in a house which has been repurposed as a performance venue. The venue has three small rooms in a row that are roughly ten square feet. We decided to perform in the center room with the audience sitting on the sides. To enter the stage, we had to work our way through the audience. Some of our movement was performed inches away from audience members. The small space created a sense of the audience being a part of the performance at every moment.

“Reality Flux” is an exciting work I created in response to current political and social issues. Creative storytelling became a strategy for exploring novel choreographic ideas. The piece shows two wild science fiction narratives examining how the future develops depending on society’s current choices. In the first narrative, environmental protections are eliminated, our country is run by corrupt politicians, and the news is controlled by the government. As we become displaced, everyone behaves aggressively and territorially over severely limited resources. In the second narrative, our government invests in technology and social programs to benefit society. Here individuals relate in a more relaxed and human way. The third section encourages community’s active participation in building a better future. The fourth wall is broken and audience members participate in an odd movement ritual. Then we abruptly wander off, leaving the audience wondering if our piece is over. Because decision-making is a continuing process, we wanted a lack of closure.

Important challenges in creating our piece were expressing many ideas, creating a sci-fi piece without having to build complicated, technology driven props, and creating dance for a tiny space. We touched on twelve different exciting ideas in the creation of “Reality Flux.” “Reality Flux” could have developed into an evening-length work, but we limited ourselves to twelve minutes to fit into a split concert. Our innovative strategy was to inject two drama segments where newscasters comment on current events in their reality. Since we do not have a props department, videotaping a drama segment was a good tactic to eliminate the need to build a flying car, house with smart technology embedded in the walls, etc. Although we think of “Reality Flux” as a dance piece, the work could be a drama piece with two movement segments.

Music: Not Your Mom/West Side Trio, The Obelisk/Espectrostatic