Video documentation of the August 10, 2021 (7 pm – 8 pm EST) performance of Gravity and Levity presented by Franklin Furnace and Eliza Ladd.
Recorded on Zoom, edited by Amilia Graham (Summer Intern, 2021).
“It took 400 million years to go from quadruped to biped, and now this?
How to move, how to eat, how to fly — join a very particular creature on a shape shifting journey to die for.”
Is it possible to find embodiment and community through the computer and technology? Can we still create relationships, communicate, and express ourselves through movement? Can we make meaningful theater on Zoom? Can we still find expansiveness and connect with the audience?
In a short, spoken-word and performance video— all in a little black box – Ladd shape shifts into a puppet character named fingers and eyes. She dances, sings, and speaks poetic text. It sounds funny, and at times it is, but the piece can also be heartbreaking. It ranges from slapstick to mime to dance to a cry from the depths of the artist’s heart.
Ladd says, “My work as an artist is all about the body. The pandemic removed my ability to play, perform, and practice with others in a shared space. What will become of live theater? Is it doomed to disembodiment? This question was already in the air before the pandemic with the prominence of the computer and technology. It’s amazing how rhythm, time and space can survive the shift in scale and medium. It turns out that the answer to all my questions is ‘yes’ — on a very deep level. Art survives, In and through. We adapt.”
View the performance and participate in a live talkback with ‘fingers and eyes’ – the central figure of Gravity and Levity. Register below.
Collaborators: Toby Bercovici, Sarasota Contemporary Dance.
ARTIST BIO
Eliza Ladd is a performer, director, stage writer, composer, and choreographer from NYC. She is currently Associate Professor of Movement and Dance at the FSU / Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training MFA. Eliza holds a BA in Comparative Religion from Harvard University and an MFA in Theater: Contemporary Performance from Naropa University.
Eliza has created original multi-disciplinary work in NYC at PS 122, Dixon Place, Movement Research, the Knitting Factory, Joyce Soho and at The Berkshire Fringe. She has performed at La Mama, the Kitchen, NY Theater Workshop, St. Ann’s Warehouse and with Shakespeare and Company in MA. She is the recipient of Franklin Furnace’s Emerging Artist award.
In Sarasota, Eliza has created and directed Tigers Above and Tigers Below and Selfie of the Ancients for the New Music New College performance series. She has collaborated with Sarasota Contemporary Dance to create the Dali Picasso Project at the Dali Museum in St. Petersberg, and performed her solo show O Let Me Just Be the Greek Whore that I Am at the first ever Sarasolo Festival.
Eliza developed a new solo piece, Autobiography of the Human Species, for a work in progress showing in the ‘In Studio Series’ at Sarasota Contemporary Dance in 2019. In February 2021 Eliza wrote and performed Gravity and Levity a new work created for Zoom and live streamed by Sarasota Contemporary Dance – In Studio Nights Series.
