Almost

Inside an ever-changing environment of frames, paper, mylar and movement three performers (Donna Costello, Stacy Lynn Smith and C. Tai Tai) steer separate narratives unraveling internally imposed and outwardly enforced identities as their bodies contort, adapt, destroy, and transform over time.  Costumes of layered paper, tulle and mylar (by Jennifer Paar) cage, cover and reveal the performers.  Visual designer Larry Jackson responds in real-time, framing the performers with large rectangles and asks the audience “to look.”  His framing offers an opportunity to confront personal perspectives, societal constraints, and the shimmering possibilities of revolution. This project aims to elevate feminist ideas while embracing, negotiating and transforming the complexities of one’s identity.   Lead artist Donna Costello states, “When we know ourselves and see one another in our complete humanity, we can be fully expressive in the world.”  

 PREMIERED: June 24-26, 2022 @CPR, Center for Performance Research

photo credit (previous & above): Julie Lemberger

Credits 

Conceived and directed by Donna Costello in collaborative co-authorship with:

Visual Designers:  Larry Jackson and Jennifer Paar

Dance Artists: Stacy Lynn Smith and C. Tai Tai

Development of ‘almost’ was supported by an Education Space Grant at the Park Avenue Armory, For the Artists! Residency Program at MOtiVE Brooklyn, a North American Cultural Lab Deep Space Residency (NACL) , BAX, and Donna Costello is a 2021-2022 Women-In-Motion Commissioned Artist. 

 BIOS of Collaborating Artists:

 STACY LYNN SMITH is a neurodivergent, mixed race/Black performance artist, choreographer, director and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water (by and for those affected by CSA), whose fourteen-year professional practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater and butoh. Fiercely dedicated to collaboration, Smith generates/devises/improvises across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists including: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Saints of an Unnamed Country, Thaddeus O’Neil, Josephine Decker, Salome Asega, Kathy Westwater, jill sigman/thinkdance, Jasmine Hearn, Emily Johnson and Donna Costello. Member- artist/activist cohort, Body Politic. Curation- Black Womxn Summit (Eva Yaa Asantewaa). 

JENNIFER PAAR has been working in New York and regionally as a costume designer for nearly 20 years. In New York, she has worked extensively with the Obie-Award winning Keen Company, having designed fifteen shows with them including:  Ordinary Days, Tick, Tick…Boom, Alphabetical Order, and Lemon Sky. Other New York credits include:  Transatlantica  (Operating Theater), Futurity, The Musical (Joe’s Pub), Every Day Above Ground with SaBooge Theatre (PS 122) and Thrill Me (York Theatre). Regional credits include:  Glengarry Glen Ross (Asolo Rep), The Tempest, Elizabeth Rex, Much Ado about Nothing (Opera House Arts), and Rabbit Hole (Premiere Stages). In addition, Jennifer regularly teaches and designs at Actor’s Studio Drama School, Ramapo College in NJ, and Kingsborough Community College. For more information visit jenniferpaar.com.  

LARRY JACKSON  Designer, maker, educator, Larry Jackson makes enduring visual art projects, concepts, and experiences. A School of Visual Art fine artist schooled in Illustration, professionally Larry has worked with great clients on numerous collaborative projects. With work experiences from the likes of Gap/Banana Republic (Branding/Presentation design), Lord & Taylor /SAKS 5th Avenue (Window Display concepts) to Design installing and Curation projects with Joni Mitchell and Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Larry works in all media. Currently, he works as the Creative Director of a new television network, Urban Music Report (UMR). His curiosity, resourcefulness and inquisitive nature is what leads him to Arts education at many NYC cultural institutions including Marquis Studios and the Park Avenue Armory. Every day he hopes to demystify what art could be and to inspire someone to create something that expresses who they are.

C. TAI TAI is a performance artist based in Chicago, with roots in New York and California. Formerly, she was known as dancer Tina Wang. ​Identity, fragility, and resilience are key themes in her work, which draws on her experience as a Taiwanese citizen raised in Latin America. By immersing the body around the objects of menial labor, she challenges assumptions about where these objects belong, who belongs with them, and their relationship to living bodies. Her performances create playful and dramatic relationships between human body parts and inanimate objects. She invites audiences to take a fresh look at differences between motion and stillness, animate and inanimate, human and non-human. After working for a decade in New York as a freelance performer (Exponential Festival, Judson Church, Governors Island, Chashama, New York Live Arts, to name a few) she is in the MFA for Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. For more information, visit taitaistudios.com. 

PRESS

“Is she a victim, or an agent — a subject of our gaze, or a commander of it?”

-Nadia Khayrallah, Dance Enthusiast