Boomerang

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performers.
Performers Matty Davis & Adrian Galvin
Music Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Duration 7:30 minutes
Premiere 2012

Boomerang is a duet of vigor and fragility, like a ceaseless tug-o-war in which rope is frayed and worn thin by the performers' ongoing mutual intensity. The rope never breaks, however, as they exert control over the tides of their physicality to maintain the connection whereby they fuel and support one another.

"The ferocity and visceral nature of BOOMERANG's work is invigorating to witness. Their storytelling is unforgiving and shamelessly personal, all at once being incredibly vulnerable and herculean in its physical accomplishments.
- Cory Michael Smith, actor

“It is the movement into and out of grace – those frenetic and jarring disjunctions in tempo and movement – that make "Boomerang" such a supremely exciting piece."
- Jessica Grim, poet

Our Past the Fuse

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performers.
Performers Matty Davis & Adrian Galvin
Duration 21 minutes
Premiere 2012

Our Past the Fuse is a highly physical, intimate work that explores movement histories and the way in which we can discover an integral part of ourselves only through each other. Upending, contorting, and enriching traditional dance vocabularies and performance techniques, Our Past the Fuse chisels away at the performers' capacity to see one another and themselves.

"This is such an intense, emotional performance that anyone who watches it with the focus it deserves will feel its power long after the final moments."
- Lucy McDiarmid, author/Montclair State University

"Suddenly there's a searchlight looking for the history of your body. When is the last time I was held? When did I push someone away? When did I lose control? When did someone give it back to me? If you're an active participant from the audience, you start to get pissed off that you're sitting down."

- Will Arbery, writer/theater artist
 

Gut check 

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performers.
Performers Matty Davis & Adrian Galvin
Text Will Arbery
Duration 20 minutes
Premiere 2013

Gut check is a journey. It progresses, stalls, rewinds, and changes directions through a series of ritual-like preparations, verbal miscommunications, and demanding, intimate challenges. The performers' relationship alternately fortifies and corrodes as they pursue their collective and individual journeys.

For the forward

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performers.
Performers Will Arbery & Matty Davis 
Visual Art Matty Davis
Text Will Arbery
Duration 16 minutes
Premiere 2014

In For the toward, two men strain against crushing weight. They attempt to create a bearable environment in which to exhale and endeavor.

"Nonstop physical exertion and risk... Radella draws an erotic and sometimes surprisingly tender intimacy from the connection between her two dancers, all the while threatening them, life and limb..."
- Eva Yaa Asantewaa, dance writer

Oughta

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in a collaborative creation process with Matty Davis.
Performers Matty Davis & Adrian Galvin
Text Will Arbery 
Duration 13 minutes
Premiere 2013 

Oughta strives. It strives to corral possibility, to possess, to regain, to bring back the inside. It heaves and crashes down. It returns, re-ushers forth, commences a tenuous of gain cycle and loss. 

How you shone through me

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performer.
Performer Matty Davis
Duration 9:30 minutes
Premiere 2014

How you shone through me is a dance of search and evocation, to unearth and honor all who have passed through this chamber.

now necessitates then, when you were bright and shining. i’m warm still, and there’s a little light to read by . . . can you bring it nearer? how was it ever so close? but it was. it was, that warmth and a little light. i will bring you back to myself. i will close this distance.

"'How you shone through me' crackles with presence and discovery and risk. It signifies yet another advance in BOOMERANG's artful, reckless exploration of how the soul stirs and shakes the body; it might just capture the very first moments of consciousness being liberated and embodied."
- Knud Adams, theater director

"Movement as big and visceral as ever . . . "How you shone through me" hurts the way that seeing another person's sadness hurts. Whatever the state of that sadness may be, it is enough to realize that it exists and to be humbled and scared and out of breath for a moment, and then to move forward and do you best to understand."

- Marty Kezon, writer

An anchor for each vessel

Choreographer Kora Radella
This work was made in collaborative creation process with the performer.
Performer Matty Davis
Duration 7:30 minutes
Premiere 2013

An anchor for each vessel explores ways in which the body anchors us to the earth and simultaneously functions as the vessel whereby we’re both tethered and free to navigate it. Body taps and pounds, hands cascade and silently deliver, each sound a discreet manifestation of the tension between confinement and release, like the muted grind of an anchor as it lugs and slips across the ocean floor.

“There’s a quiet brilliance to "An anchor for each vessel." The absence of music, the dominance of the extremities, the power struggle playing out within the body of the dancer – create a fierce and quite beautiful tension.”  
- Jessica Grim, poet

"When Davis moved beyond his hair and grabbed hold of the space above his head, the stakes only got higher for me. The ascent up the shirt and through the hair acknowledged the individual’s relationship to the body in an intensely intimate way, and the hands suddenly grabbing for the air above the head enacted an attempt to move beyond the body—to reach for something not only intangible but ultimately unreachable with the physical limits of the body."
- Marty Kezon, writer