Scale
Using the pain scale as a primary source material, Scale places medicalized methods of quantifying pain in conversation with alternative ways of reading and attending to pain emerging from the disability community, ultimately proposing new ways of caring for the bodymind in dance. These complex interactions between medicalization, care, and community are explored through movement, video, and the use of access tools for both performers and audience members. Scale invites audience members to attend to their own embodied experience of the piece, offering pillows, blankets, and other care objects as tools for curating the way they engage with and experience the work. Scale poses questions around the ways that we perceive pain, ultimately reaching toward a more compassionate and disability-informed way of creating and performing dance.
Featuring Maggie Bridger, Jordan Brown, Joán Joel, Alex Neil-Sevier, and Robby Lee Williams. Sound Design by Shireen Hamza. Costumes and Visual Art by Reveca Torres. Pillows, Blankets and Other Craft Objects by Maggie Bridger, Margaret Fink, Sandy Guttman, Alison Kopit, Ashley Miller. Audio Description by the dancers. ASL consultation by Joán Joel.
Read Lauren Sheely's response to Scale, "Curating a Space of Care" published in the Performance Response Journal.