The Unity of Skin plunges the viewer into a circular labyrinth of textures. Cyclic in character, it permits the imagination to distort form. It embraces the possibility of continuing indefinitely. Dizzily growing and fading, the line between audience and performers becomes blurred. Partly influenced by the fragments of text left by the group of philosophers called the Pre-Socratics, The Unity of Skin is an intimate trio with accomplished dancers David Figueroa, Kelly Hayes, and Jillian Hollis. It features a malleable crocheted set and costumes by Olek.
Photo: Olek
“Multicolored crocheted webs of fabric by the artist Olek serve as striking costumes and props for The Unity of Skin. Ahern's choreography is striking and original in itself, and even more so in it's use of Olek's creations. One powerful pas de deux takes place with a wall of webbing dividing the man from the woman; the partnering takes place through the gaps.”
-Brian Seibert, The New Yorker | April 2008
“Captivating... a thing of beauty and strangeness haunted by apparently unconnected moments and discontinuous time. The light/heavy crocheted netting is used as transport, road, blanket, skirt, barrier and semi-permeable wall; it resembles cells viewed through a microscope, shed snakeskin or a heavy-duty spiderweb.”
-Quinn Batson, offoffoff.com | April 2008
“Very few artists succeed at allowing the audience into the room with the performers; more often, "we" are here and "you" are there. In Ahern's work, we are all here. In her audience, I meet her work as though I'm meeting someone who is a rigorous and subtle thinker, and yet completely transparent and forthright. I'm neither tricked nor seduced. Everything is what it is, but because of the quality of our shared interest, it has become extraordinary."
"a performance that is more truth than representation.”
-Jeffrey Frace | April 2008
“Hypnotic images... everything had this translucent net like feel, as if our skin cells were magnified and re-set in amazingly vibrant colors.”
-Jessy Smith, Dance Enthusiast.org | April 2008
Photo: Michael Faulkner
A Crocheted Dream
by Quinn Batson Offoffoff.com | April 2008
Carrie Ahern is featured on the Fractured Atlas blog
Emily B | Nov 20, 2008
Carrie Ahern is interviewed by veteran dance writer
Eva Yaa Asantewaa. 2008 LISTEN to the podcast/read the blog
Photo: Michael Faulkner
Multiplicity of Discourse
Excerpted from a review by Jeffrey Fracè
Carrie Ahern experiments. She asks the question, "Let's see what happens if..." and then sees what happens. She ponders a problem, then examines it and discusses it in a discourse of the body. She doesn't tell the audience what she's learned. Instead, she structures the problem so that the audience can examine it as well. We are brought to a place in the process where we are made equal.
Very few artists succeed at allowing the audience into the room with the performers; more often, "we" are here and "you" are there. In Ahern's work, we are all here. First, because we all share the process of examination. Second, because Ahern is expert at integrating the architecture of the playing space into the show. Very frequently we are reminded that we are in the very same room as the performers; this is attributable both to the lighting and set designs, but also to the attitude of the performers who apparently share our wonder at their physical surroundings.
The third reason is that Ahern resists the impulse to entertain us. In her audience, I meet her work as though I'm meeting someone who is a rigorous and subtle thinker, and yet completely transparent and forthright. I'm neither tricked nor seduced. Everything is what it is, but because of the quality of our shared interest, it has become extraordinary. In The Unity of Skin, dancers repeat short phrases for hypnotically long durations, they take physically demanding solos, they promenade slowly through the environment, and they entangle themselves in the crocheted set. What's unremarkable in description becomes mesmerizing in execution when performed with a clarity of intention that disallows assumptions, and a force of interest that precludes rote.
Lights come up to reveal dancers in tight formation, repeating short individual circular movement phrases in varying tempi while the live cello offers vibrations. I felt the energy of a river contained by a lock. As the lock opens, there's a rush, and the water pours from the container into the new space, gradually finding equilibrium in the expanse. And so the dancers gradually bring the audience to equilibrium in this room in St. Mark's Church, expanding into space, finding gradually more unison movement, and mixing some retrograde in their expansion as ebb mixes with flow. In their bodies' discourse, the dancers have moved past indication –"this" pointing at "that" –and have created metaphor. The audience is treated to a more immediate experience of their energy, and to a performance that is more truth than representation. We allow ourselves to slow down time, along with the dancers, into a finale that refuses to burst, but instead releases in a long exhale. We can hear our own breathing –or is that the dancers'? In the darkness we are still wondering what happens next.
Photo: Michael Faulkner
Interpretations of the Unity of Skin
by Rebecca Smith Millstein
beginning
Whirling dervish repetition,
taking great care in the
placement of self and things.
The dervish: there is an
unyielding, starched nature to
neck/head placement and arms
Protection? From nature of self?
From the inertia of life?
The soft masculine-such care,
such specificity throughout piece
showed softness
within a strong framework
caught
In the universal web, tangled up in life,
struggling/enveloped/yield
Rolling in fabric on floor
-will she be swallowed up?
Will she be able to breathe
amidst the chaos,
the wrapped up nature of living,
of the strands of our lives?
Will the other dancers allow her to stay
there or will they peel
the layers to free her?
Perhaps she is swaddled,
constraining against or reveling in?
Maybe not caught
but running headlong
into entanglements
Alternately hyper-vigilant
and the nexus who is gently watching,
overseeing whirling cosmos
Intersection of lives-
the connector (connection)
between the other two
Ankles become wrapped,
grounding one in the world.
Choice or vortex pull?
spectrums
Sound-the air fills with the
vibrations. You can feel it suffuse
your marrow, your fluid self.
Feel it in your skin; through your
bones; in the watery you; through
your many layers.
Dancers their non-selves; their
boundaries; their energy which
moves the space
Layering of one's self
within movement
light
Emanating from the dancers,
pulsing from the space, the walls,
saturating the air in layers
(light through particles?)
sliding along a continuum
Being in the moment vs
on the moment vs mindlessness
Life is fun; life is slippery and
precarious underfoot; challenging
your support (emotional foundation,
making choices contrary to your
norm) or boundaries
pup
The sound returns us to the corporeal
Fearful and menacing
and defensive
Pushing/landing onto those
powerful boxer front limbs,
shoulders connecting
so emphatically to the ground beneath
Again, a return to the
daily-ness of our world out of lofty notions Soothed by a simple touch duet on material
duet on material
Floating (lifts)
Letting the universe hold you; the
interconnection of us all (cosmic
strings that separate & unite)
Reaching through and around
obstacles to be with another
giving over to support by another,
by the universe.
running
Sucked my breath away
with the force of the vortex
Not pedestrian-familiar,
brings us back to our world
solo
running back and forth such tiring work to rail
against your boundaries
both seen and silent
Catching up
and being caught up
releves
Balanced at the end of the world,
standing on the threads
of the world
connection between different
versions of self? Tenuous, strong
the break between two dimensions
ending/retrograde
laughing and stillness
In the stillness which surrounds
this sound both keeps it contained
and allows it to move beyond itself.
Allows us to move beyond ourselves
Dancers as pure light,
so rich they reflect us in their glow
Nebulous lights, particles... .
Will they bind? Will they float? How
can time hold such a sound for so long?
Did the laughing slow time?
Were the revolutions of this world
aligned with the other dimensions?
When all is just right, harmonized,
will we slow rapturously? Can we?
The spectrums of our self
Which layers will allow for this
and which rebel? How does time slow?
How elastic can these three
show it to be so?
The warp and weft of time,
the structure for experience
Comfortable/uncomfortable
in living moments.
Living in moments,
moving through moments.
photo: Michael Faulkner
photo: Michael Faulkner
Photo: Michael Faulkner
photo: Michael Faulkner
photo: Michael Faulkner