Casting original dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Rhee renders the human body as minimalist shapes that convey an improvisational selection of ‘notes’ within a musical composition co-created with Elliott Sharp. The dancers’ movements, both choreographed and organic, shift horizontally across the row of screens. At times, the movements flow synchronically with the sound while in other moments the relationship between the visual and aural becomes a series of independent juxtapositions.
In this work, an irreconcilable tension exists between physical dance and musical notes. The dancers perform within a ‘musical staff’ made of five thick rubber bands that are suspended at different heights yet are equidistant from each other.
A visual loss occurs when the two-dimensional music notes transition into the three-dimensional dance and vice versa. As more notes are gained, more dancers are lost; the two must maintain a balanced yet opposed existence.
Source: Doosan Gallery New York
