{"id":825,"date":"2015-05-07T10:15:46","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T10:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/?p=6868"},"modified":"2018-07-27T07:21:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T15:21:50","slug":"art-on-the-edge-extreme-dance-performance-and-more","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/art-on-the-edge-extreme-dance-performance-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Art on the Edge: Extreme Dance, Performance, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth Streb was once called the “Evel Knievel of dance,” and our documentary\u00a0Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity<\/a><\/em>\u00a0captures her life as an “extreme action architect.” Her\u00a0choreography, which she calls POPACTION, “intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, the circus, and Hollywood stunt-work,” and her dancers are often required to perform physically punishing maneuvers.<\/p>\n

To get you in the mood as we approach the film’s PBS premiere, we’ve collected some other examples of “extreme” performance and visual art, some even more out there than Streb’s work.<\/p>\n

We had to bypass posting some<\/em> of the interesting stuff we found\u00a0\u2014 it was\u00a0just too<\/em> intensely extreme. But still, a word of caution:\u00a0a few of the items we are posting here may still be too intense for some viewers, and there may be some nudity (though nothing too explicit).\u00a0Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let’s start with something fairly gentle. The BODHI Project<\/a> is the performance company of the SEAD School in Salzburg, Austria. Their pieces are fascinating, intense, modern, provocative. Here’s a sample platter:<\/p>\n

Marina Abramovic, the “Grandmother of Performance Art”<\/strong>
\nPerformance artist Marina Abramovi\u0107: ‘I was ready to die.’<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1974, Marina Abramovi\u0107 did a terrifying experiment. At a gallery in her native Belgrade, Serbia, she laid out 72 items on a trestle table and invited the public to use them on her<\/a> in any way they saw fit. Some of the items were benign; a feather boa, some olive oil, roses. Others were not<\/a>. “I had a pistol with bullets in it, my dear. I was ready to die.” At the end of six hours, she walked away, dripping with blood and tears, but alive. “How lucky I am,” she says in her still heavy accent, and laughs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

https:\/\/vimeo.com\/113553843<\/p>\n

More Artists Working on the Edge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Haring\/LiquidLoft’s “Fremdk\u00f6rper”<\/a>: “The existential idea of the piece is revolving around the question how [sic<\/em>] a certain creature or character alien not only to us but also to him\/her\/itself, can be presented in the framework of dance based performance.”<\/p>\n

Now learn about the work of Gavin Krastin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s nothing polite or subtle about performance artist Gavin Krastin<\/a>\u2018s work. Last year at the National Arts Festival he invited us into an icy chapel to feast\u00a0off a banquet\u00a0laid out on his body. He\u2019s vacuum sealed himself in plastic, been paraded through the streets of Grahamstown strapped to a\u00a0back-bending contraption hitched behind\u00a0a donkey cart, he\u2019s donned heal-less thigh-high pleather bondage boots, worn wigs, makeup, feathers, a deflated plastic dolphin skin, and most often nothing at all. Gavin\u2019s\u00a0interests lie in the permeability and politics of boundaries \u2013 of the body and how it is represented, of theatre conventions, gender, and space \u2013 within\u00a0the larger South African socio-political context.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n