A group of C-VILLE Staff skipped out of the office yesterday afternoon to catch Aaron Henderson‘s exhibit, "Midway" at the Ruffin Gallery on the UVA Grounds. Henderson is a visiting professor at UVA who once worked as a dancer in Elizabeth Streb‘s death-defying dance troupe, STREB Extreme Action Company. (They’re bringing their RAW show to the Paramount Theater on March 4.)
Henderson designed the video backdrop for Streb’s Invisible Forces show, which he says Streb designed when she "was reading physics and wondering what quantum dance would look like." The result looks at least as intensive as boxing, with dancers narrowly avoiding an I-beam that’s swinging around the middle of the stage. When three cinderblocks are swinging across the stage, it looks like following the steps is a matter of life and death.
More after the video.
At some point he said he got tired of falling 30′ from a truss onto his stomach and struck out on his own. While living in Chicago, Henderson traveled to the University of Minnesota to rent out their cheerleaders for an afternoon. (They gave him the nonprofit rate.) He asked them each chearleader, one after the other, to stand in the same place and perform the same motion. He filmed and sequenced 12,000 stills of these motions into this crazy video.
More after the video.
His show at UVA continues in this direction, looking at people in extreme circumstances—on the Gravitron, for example. Just as the Gravitron begins to move quickly enough, Henderson said, the walls become an impromptu performance space. The footage here is arranged to scroll across two flatscreen TVs, as if you’re viewing these people pinned from above. Check it out here:
More after the video.
Oh man, I can’t believe I used to eat pounds of funnel cake and cotton candy before hopping on the Gravitron. If you can stomach/make it, Henderson’s show closes tomorrow. Check out STREB at the Paramount if you miss Henderson.