Details of a Couple
Premiered at the Pinnacle Pavilion in Portland, Oregon
2007

The evening length work, Details of a Couple, is inspired by the innovative American artist Joseph Cornell, who created surrealist influenced collages within boxes. Each of Cornell’s boxes are a tiny stage in which images are arranged. His small constructions contain pieces of once beautiful and precious objects, photographs, bric-a-brac, and other everyday items that evoke a strong sense of recognition and nostalgia from the viewer. Similarly, Details of a Couple is a reminiscence of times past, a montage of moments expressing the subtlety and volatility of the relationship between its two main characters.

In collaboration with local architects Jason Roberts and Jennifer Marsicek, architectural model maker Robert Petty, and production manager Jessica Flores, Tess and Laks explore the evening’s primary design concept: a stage within the stage. A long banquet table covered with hundreds of glasses, each containing a short story of where it was found and bought on a small portion of curled parchment, inhabits a long hallway. Hanging around the table are the remnants of the walls of a room. Two boxes, each half of an architectural model of the physical space, contain the found objects of the two performers. Video flickers across a series of oversized roosting birds at the end of the hallway. The cement retaining wall looms over a traditional stage in the front of the Pavilion, encased in glass by floor to ceiling windows.

The performers lead the audience from installation to installation with a series of dance vignets. Contrasting low weighted movements with airborne agility, explosive quality with lyrical softness, the dancers explore the range of emotions indicated by the changes of environment.

Mixing the use of stop-motion and real-time filming, the dancers are shown in urban locations around the city as well as in the performance space. The small moments around the performer on film become highlighted in the same way that Cornell’s collages become more vital within the framing of the boxes. By contrasting recognizable city locations with imagined scenarios, the fantastic and surreal become attainable for the audiences imaginations.