Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Bungee dancing from a bridge. Body slamming into a mat. Spiraling down a wall strapped to a harness. It's all in a day's work for STREB, the Brooklyn-based troupe of extreme action artists.
Since 1985, founder Elizabeth Streb, 62, dubbed the Evel Knievel of dance, has pitted performers against extraordinary, gravity-defying feats in pursuit of answers to a key question: "What is the body willing to let happen to it?"
"I think that what inspires me is what is possible," Ms. Streb says. "How far away can a body get from an audience member and still be seen and still matter?"
3 comments:
Despite the fact that this sounds like an incredibly breath-taking show to watch, I was a little taken aback by Streb's statement that actors are often hurt in the middle of performances and need to be replaced without missing a beat.
If there is a known precondition to your work that may cripple an actor, how difficult must it be to find actors that want to work for your company? Is the company forgiving when you are out or work for weeks with cracked ribs, or broken limbs? Who is paying for all of those hospital bills, and are the actors being compensated in some way for being hurt on the job for what seems to be accident-prone choreography?
There is pushing the body to the limits, and then there is actively putting yourself in harm's way. I may be extrapolating that statement a bit farther than it was intended, but if the audience is gasping and putting their hands over their eyes (and peeking through when they think it might be safe to) for 95 minutes in fear of the actors' safety, I'm hesitant to say that this danger is justifiable. Being awestruck is one thing, being in panic is another.
Unlike Kael, I didn't find the statement that actors often need to be replaced in the middle of a performance that shocking. I'm not saying that it isn't wrong, or a little bit cruel, but many high risk performance pieces of the same vein have a similar outlook.
Most famously, of course, is cirque du soleil. They have plans to edit the show if someone DIES, and no one is really calling them out on that.
People are willing to risk their lives to perform in this stuff, whether we can imagine it or not. I know I can't, but I am in awe of people who can. I would be very interested in hearing their reasoning behind wanting to put themselves at such risk.
Also, as I head from someone who saw Streb, it was amazing. So those performers aren't throwing themselves in harms way for a product that is just so-so.
Hi all. Just for the record, I was the harness rigger and performer safety officer for Streb's "One Extraordinary Day" in London this past July. Other than some bruises and chaffing
, no one was injured during any rehearsal or performance of the piece. I have been involved with several Streb performances and there has never been an injury. There doesn't have to be. If the designers, technicians and artistic staff do their jobs, and if the performers stay in shape and do what they have rehearsed, there's no reason to expect an injury. That doesn't mean we didn't plan for one, however. Risk assessments were conducted, safety procedures were designed and a rescue plan was developed for each location.
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