From the Department of True Stories:

My parents recently discovered a VHS of me dancing to “A Chorus Line” when I was nine years old. The complexity of the movement is pretty surprising - it’s two minutes of non-repeating, highly syncopated stuff.

This video ended up becoming fodder for my latest work, Temporary Matters, which reflects on the passage of youth and other themes related to the notion of parenthood. I had my dancers learn the video in its entirety, and variations on that material make up the choreography for Temporary Matters.

Coloring:

My son was born right in the middle of the Temporary Matters creative process. He was five weeks early, which was a delight for us, but stressful on his liver. He quickly developed jaundice and had to be treated under blue LEDs for a few days. Though his condition wasn’t terribly serious, seeing him under the blue LEDs was terrifying.

This experience had a profound affect on the development of Temporary Matters. Even the deep blue lights and blood orange digital readings filtered into the final work—in the form of a costume color palate. Photos of the costumes may be found here.

Temporary Matters: Texts

Our creation of Temporary Matters was influenced by…

“A Temporary Matter” from Jhumpa Lahiri’s masterful Interpreter of Maladies
This is probably one of the most beautiful and most affecting short stories I’ve ever read. It’s about the stillbirth of a young couple’s child, and their eventual divorce. We appropriated the title of Temporary Matters from this one, and it definitely set the tone for the piece.

and...

Beauty in Decay: The Art of Urban Exploration
I stumbled upon this one in St. Mark’s Bookstore in the East Village. It has some stunning images—ranging from abandoned steel mills in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Pripyat near Chernobyl in Russia. The book also has some great writing on the dystopic thought and theory to Urban Exploration (URBEX) photography, all of which informed the mood and emotional investigations of Temporary Matters.