The Dreaming/Preparing/Dancing Preview Series is an opportunity to engage with choreographers and performers alike, offering a window into the process towards a new production.

Nina Haft & Company’s Precarious Pod tackles the theme of animals and extinction. Haft deeply explores instinct, adaptation, and finding balance within our world. We can learn so much by tuning into the animal world and its own kind of choreography, navigating change and survival. Precarious Pod looks at the life of crows, wolves, and the vaquita (an almost extinct harbor porpoise in the Gulf of Mexico).

Performances tonight at the Joe Goode Annex (Saturday, November 23, 2019) are at 7pm and 9pm. Sunday shows (Sun, November 24) are at 4pm and 6pm. 

Mallory Markham. Photo by Hillary Goidell.

Today we get to hear from both choreographer Nina Haft and from performer Mallory Markham.

Jill Randall: What was the seed for the project?

Nina Haft: After I finished King Tide, which I worked on for quite some time, I continued to be curious…why is it that I struggle to feel the invisible forces of nature in my own being? I have made several made several projects on the topic, but trying to feel the whole planet. Still curious. Why was it difficult to respond like animals do to things like heat, seasons, tide cycles, lunar cycles, global warming, and sea level rise. Plants and animals don't have the ability to opt out. Parts of the natural world – they are here to respond to that. We (humans) – we can turn that off. Animals never opt out. There was something to learn from animals about this. 

The whole idea of choices we make, and opting out, is so powerful. What questions are guiding you in Precarious Pod?

On a choreographic level, over the last ten years I have become more interested in how improvisation is a compositional practice. I thought a lot about, that we, as dancers, we practice being attuned to our external senses and to our internal senses. Like proprioception, equilibrium, emotional states, etc. I wondered if we – dancers – might be especially suited to explore how we are animals. Like animals, we can improvise off of our immediate reactions to things, but more often, dancers keep using our trained habits. Animals use instincts that guide their movement. I was curious then how using improv could reflect instinct. There are improvisational scores in almost every part of the piece.

What are 5 words or phrases to describe the project?

Remember that we are animals

Reconnect with nature

Emergency

Interspecies

Sensate

Catching up with dancer Mallory Markham, she also shares a few thoughts about Precarious Pod. 

Jill Randall: What do you love about the project?

Mallory Markham: I’ve really loved the opportunity to embody and research physical sensation and experience, and in my case it was in relationship to the vaquita porpoise. Rather than learn and imitate, we human movers attempted to inhabit observed sensations and translate them into our personal and inherit ways of moving. I’m grateful for the opportunity to understand myself and these animals both a little better. 

What challenges you in the work?

Not overthinking or trying too hard to recall sensation with logic rather than physical memory. I have to remind myself to not get too hung up on getting the choreographed movements “right” but rather allowing experience and tasks to lead instead. 

What thoughts do you have about the intersubjective experience – of you with the audience members?

I hope that this performance can feel as interactive as possible. Both audience members and dancers can exist together in shared experience, feeding off one another's energy without making a direct or intentional connection, but instead noticing existence and response in proximity to one another. 

 

Check out this immersive 60 minute event this weekend in San Francisco. www.joegoode.org

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Precarious Pod

Choreography: Nina Haft with the dancers

Video Design: Ian Winters

Scenic Design: Lauren Elder

Lighting Design: Rogelio Lopez

Sound Design: Gretchen Jude

Dancers: Rose Huey, Jennifer Twilley Jerum, Rogelio Lopez, Mallory Markham, Andrew Merrell, Rebecca Morris and Jesse Wiener

At the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco November 15-24, 2019