Cyborg Dreams

Overview

The piece lands in the not-so-distant future, when humans have evolved with their technology to become one. What ensues is a dreamlike remembering of what led to this moment. This is a nonlinear journey through the reimagined now, a world afflicted by global warming with vast forest fires, impossibly strong hurricanes, sprawling human construction, and all of the waste that follows- war, famine, and greed, that has spun our society out of control. In the opening section, our cyborgs awaken, flex muscle and metal, bone and wires. They feel each other collectively, and remember how they arrived. The centerpiece of the work is the storm they traveled through to become their new selves. It is smokey, windy and hazardous. The last section is the triumph of their chimera beings, as they learn to express their multifaceted selves, allowing all parts of themselves to surface as they feel the need to be. The work is about the now, who we are, what is happening. It is a poetic look, one that joins hope and dread, reflecting inward while looking out. The work ranges from exploding ensembles to introverted solos. It is about these people, who they are, how they feel. They are of the-everyone, the suburban families and urban loners, the workers in collars blue, white, and rainbow; they are the masses, and the few. Each performer feels, expresses, lives in the balance. The work produces generative material fluctuating between the literal and abstract, leading to states never before imagined.

About the Artist

Curt Haworth is an expatriate Californian who choreographed and danced in New York City for twenty years before moving to Philadelphia in 2009. As a Philly based artist he: curates free improvisation as a member of ISOP (Impermanent Society of Philadelphia), organizes the Contact Improvisation at the Headlong Studios, and is Artist in Residence at the Mascher Space Cooperative. He produces work with his pickup company Curt Haworth Movement and Performance and has created eight evening or half evening length works and dozens of shorter ones. His passion is improvisation and believes magic lies in the traces inside material that occurs spontaneously, the embodiment of sound and the ex-corporeal vibrations of movement. In 2019, to further his research, he co-founded Dissolving Doors, dance festival of compositional improvisation.Curt received a BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz and a MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and holds the rank of Professor at UARTs, where he has taught since 2002. Curt performed with Race Dance, Yoshiko Chuma’s the School of Hard Knocks, the collaborative improvisation group Vitamin C, and toured internationally with David Dorfman Dance from 1990 to 2002, while creating 15 original roles. He has taught and set work as a guest artist throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Asia, including 10 summers at the American Dance Festival (ADF) and 10 summers at the Tisch Summer Dance Residency. His work has been presented across Philadelphia and NYC, as well as at Cultivate Festival NH, X-Fest MA, Frantasia ME, Earthdance MA, Rockland Community College, Bennington College, Buenos Aires Argentina, Tanecne Divadlo Festival Bratislava Slovakia and the ADF.
https://curthaworth.wixsite.com/movement

Credits