Slowdanger

In August performance artists Slowdanger held a 3 day residency in our Dance Studio, in return we asked them to write a blog piece about the experience. If you’re interested in having space to develop your creative work see our residency page.

While in Bristol for a peer review of our performance methods chapter for the Routledge Handbook for Health and Environmental Humanities at University of Bristol, we were able to engage in a studio residency for our performance work, ABYSS that premiered in Amsterdam the following week via a residency at Triplets and partnership with club Sexyland World, Impromptu Amsterdam, and ZID Theater. Aspects of our conversations with academic researchers who contributed to the publication also entered our research in the studio. Inspired by those conversations, we used our time at The Island to develop movement scores, character states and improvisational containers that we translated to our collaborators in Amsterdam. These included, crevice score, rave practice, absurd face and triple design research as well as shared choreographic phrases. 

Slowdanger is a multidisciplinary performance entity founded in 2013 by co-artistic directors taylor knight and anna thompson, based out of Pittsburgh, PA and creating work nationally/internationally. We use choreographic, improvisational and contemporary dance/performance frameworks to create work at the intersection of movement, sound, technology, physiological centering and ontological examination. Our work largely centers the body, researching its relationship to others, the environment, sensory information, technology and the unknown/unknowable. 

slowdanger has performed across the United States, Canada and Europe in venues ranging from proscenium theaters and galleries to nightclubs and dive bars. From directing music videos to scoring plays, we transform our shape to adapt to a variety of different containers. In addition to producing multidisciplinary dance/sound performances, we develop soundscores for theater, dance, film and virtual reality projects as well as act as interdisciplinary movement consultants for actors, musicians, and architects.

As a queer non-binary led organization, we invest in the deconstruction of gendered binaries in how audiences view and engage with performance and performers. We provoke to our public that there is no wrong way to view performance and seek to empower audiences to draw meaning from the ephemerality of their own sensations and perceptions. The name, slowdanger, was inspired by Pittsburgh road signs that signify a demolition of old surfaces to build upon the remnants. We continually return to this overarching concept in performance creation; rebuilding, slowing down to examine the remains and reimagining new futures.