Événement

hOPPomage

Driveway Dancers in association with Footloose present hOPPomage, an evening of performance work inspired by the life and artwork of influential conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011). Directed and designed by Zack and performed by Elizabeth Costello, Mary Alice Fry, Margarita Galindo, Audrey Spinazola and Zack

Using the diverse artworks of the late artist Dennis Oppenheim as their starting point, Zack and his Driveway Dancers have devised an assemblage of jazz dance, lyrical gestures and bizarre sign language that delves into the mysteries of creation and procreation. In hOPPomage, four women strive to connect the dots in another blue world where fatherhood, production, and useless beauty overlap. To the accompaniment of an eclectic soundscape, the dancers manipulate objects such as ferns, rags, and crumpled paper to construct striking visual images that recall and extend some of Oppenheim's artworks.

Driveway Dancers, so named because they rehearse regularly in public spaces and parks, often incorporate suggestionsfrom passersby. Choreography and text are created collaboratively under the direction of Zack, whose multi-disciplinary skills and artistic vision binds the work together. Thus, movement and content are both personal and specific to the performers, while still developed in concert with the themes evoked by Oppenheim's oeuvre.

Oppenheim began his career in the 1960s and early 1970s in the company of other conceptual artists, including Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd, Vito Acconci, Robert Smithson, Laurie Anderson, and Bruce Nauman. As Minimalism and "automatic" art gave way to other forms of experimentation, Oppenheim began building large Earth Works before moving on to Body Art and Video/Performance works. Central issues of his approach to art at this time included documentation, dematerialization, transfusion and transmission, and the integration of art and life. Later he designed elaborate installations, often machines or factories, which sometimes involved fireworks, before turning to monumental works of public art.