(LARVAE Summer 2020 CANCELLED DUE TO COVID-19)

Rework Solo Title: Larvae

This piece is a premier of a work in progress performed last June 2019 titled: “June Bug Rolls Toward the Sun Like a Scarab”. Larvae is a multimedia dance theater performance about dating, dance, and parenting with Attention Deficit Disorder. On a quest for true love and artistic survival, Boubion’s transformation from larvae to beetle draws from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and her personal stories as a queer Latinx dance animal.  The piece begins with a monologue and ceremony with humor, desire and political charge that creates context and content for a culturally nuanced and personal story to unfold. The piece is set within the environment of live text, voice overs, live music, props, costume changes and video layering of actual beetles and her dancing that was shot in natural locations in Sonoma county. The dance is grounded in research about beetles, scarabs and neuropsychology.

My intention is to perform it at Shawl Anderson Dance Center in Berkeley, CA. and submit the work to other venues as well. It will be followed by a workshop format feedback process for the audience. This interests me because I was confronted with very personal stories by audience members after my performances last year and a facilitated process seems more suitable for this setting. I will also be collaborating with local health organizations to bring this piece to my ADHD support group and other affiliates in this area. 

As a further development, I am planning to hire a violinist to play the Metamorphosis by Philip Glass live during my grotesque burlesque piece of becoming a beetle and accepting our strangeness in its entirety. I also plan to sing the last section live myself instead of the voice over as well as develop the choreography to match the themes I am working with more deeply and directly.

Video is a work in progress at SafeHouse Arts in SF. July, 2019

Choreography, text, costume, video installation, by Liz Boubion.  

Videography: Matthew Sigal

Sound design in collaboration with Micropixie.  

Dramaturge: Kimberly Lester.

Violinist: TBA