Repertoire
Round Peg Square Hole
5 minutesFree improvisation with Michael Evans and Susan Hefner at Susan’s Salon December 11, 2010, with washing machine guts, aluminum bowls, boozaphone, sheet metal, and wood.
Domestic Noise
50 minutesStructured improvisation by Susan Hefner and Michael Evans, percussionist, in which the potential of ordinary household objects, appliances and garbage is extended to create sound, symbol and sculpture. The couple seeks to crack through the spatial edges of a claustrophobic kinesphere through subversive goofiness, messy happenstance and rage. Movement conversations are thwarted by an ever-growing environment of refuse from the past. These flawed humans cannot come together with any clarity; or can they?See also Michael Evans.
Cymbalic Logicians
30 minutes
Structured improvisation created and performed by Michael Evans, percussionist, and Susan Hefner. The work features 50 cymbals: suspended, mounted on stands, bowed, struck, danced upon, thrown or worn. The performance piece makes its own live music. Pushing the boundaries of musician and dancer, Michael and Susan create duets as two equally visible interacting characters. Michael enlarges and abstracts the natural movements of a musician in space while Susan’s fractured dancing results in sound-making. The instruments become symbols, sculpture, and objects of theater: barriers, islands, quagmires, garments, and tender gifts. Video clips from the rehearsal process by Nelson Simon give a humorous glimpse of the performers’ real life relationship.
Fulminate Moon
60 minutes
Structured improvisation created and performed by Michael Evans, percussionist, and Susan Hefner. Through nonsensical movement and absurd interactions in a space strewn with drums and bells, the duo crashes into a noisy relationship full of playful humor. In spite of out-of-control falling, missed connections and bumbling slapstick, they sometimes arrive at accidental harmonies. The piece provides a wry glimpse of our struggle as men and women to reach each other on uncluttered ground. Video by Nelson Simon.
Home Remedies
30 minutesZany quartet based on the tendencies in our culture to focus on appearances rather than what’s really going on underneath. It takes an ironic view of our obsession with, say, hair products, when our guts are contorted by disasters both local and global. The dang car alarms, breaking glass and explosions reflect a world gone to hell – but don’t we look good! Other featured home remedies – painkillers, caffeine, denial, and pretense, keep us mercifully numb in our hyperactivity. Soundtrack by Michael Evans, noise/percussion and Evan Gallagher, keyboards/percussion. Dancers: Eve Chalom, Jenna Hunt, Columbine Macher, Julia Sabangan.