8cell is a portal within which we witness an individual dancer, Julia Erickson, grappling with her inner landscape and ingrained patterns through movement, light, sound and text. We are situated in interstitial space, between worlds that we do not live within yet, where we untangle the past to piece together a future. Within this process we reflect and mirror the molting and pupal stages of insects, where the body turns to liquid and is reformed or the exterior becomes too tight and one must push out the old exoskeleton. The title ‘8 cell’ refers to the dimensionality of a fourth dimensional tesseract cube that is physically impossible to exist in this reality, as well as the 8 cell stage of embryological development that exists prior to cells beginning to form a human being. We witness this imagined space and liminal stage as a passage for transformation to occur within. This piece is informed by Arundharti Roy’s article, “The pandemic is a portal” , and expands this notion to every moment as a portal to undo and change our conditioned patterns individually, interpersonally, and societally.
direction/choreography/text: slowdanger (anna thompson / taylor knight)
performer/movement/text: Julia Erickson
sound design: slowdanger
audio mastering: Luke Starcher
light sculpture/cinematography: ProjectileObjects
video editing: ProjectileObjects + slowdanger
