Liquid Past (an interdisciplinary piece weaving together dance, puppet theater and material performance)

Context / Description:

Concept, Choreography and Direction by Luis Tentindo

With conceptual input and performance from Bernard Brown

Liquid Past is a dance-theater piece, which combines movement, image/text, and puppets/objects. The point of departure of this work deals with the archival layers of meaning, which are hidden within specific sites of social and cultural tension as related to the personal life of the performer. A highly visual work, Liquid Past explores memory through personal narrative, as the performer skillfully negotiates his relationship between projected images, which are created live on stage with a mobile live-feed camera, and his embodied presence. Liquid Past, through both a poetic and cathartic process, engages directly with the audience in provocative ways.

This dance and material performance work comprised the performance component of my MFA thesis project at UCLA – WAC/D. During my MFA studies, I was invited to present an in-progress version at Puppet Blok at Dixon Place in NYC and at the On Edge Festival in Santa Barbara.

The piece featured dance woven together with puppet and object theater to tell a story of loss and resilience as it worked with scale, intense visuality, and expressive dancing.