THINGS AREN’T WHERE THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN QUICK SLICE
A Fosse inspired dance plague contaminates a pizza shop in this anti-disciplinary film installation. Traces of the choreography from his Sweet Charity are undressed from their historic narrative and resummoned inside a quintessential NYC locale. Yerushalmy’s movement direction utilizes Fosse’s idiosyncratic sensibility without its hetero-seductive performance. Boldly referencing this source material, Baldwin constructs graphic frames and strips its musical theatre fanfare and cinematic satire with the intention of “re-vamping” not “re-creating”. Baldwin calls this moshpit world “an uncanny perhaps crass modernization of an iconic dance style that turns a rote everyday into a crackdown-celebration.”
The story begins with portraits of solitude. Demographics converge over a quick slice inside the neutrality of a pizza shop. It’s a casual, no bullshit, non-committal community hub — fiercely NYC. But when a “contaigent” enters the scene, pedestrian codes of conduct break down. Dance — nuanced gestures, fierce gaze and undulating spines — infects our lost individuals with a distinctly subversive Fosse alphabet. Routine is disrupted as our cast slips from task to choreography. Moving from isolation to collective celebration, something taboo is released.
Quick Slice will be installed in an intentionally unsuspecting location, a bathroom. Viewers move through panels of projected film, reflecting off surfaces and bodies waiting in line and washing hands. A sonic landscape of diegetic sound, original score and remixes heighten this kinesthetic experience.
By putting things where they don’t belong, Quick Slice provokes questions around the isolation of art-mediums and their viewership conventions. “I want to see how elemental interactivity can be and invite people who aren’t “looking for art” into an inclusive body conversation.” — Baldwin
Director: Lily Baldwin
Movement Direction: Netta Yerushalmy
Producer: Brighid Greene
Original Music & Sound: Mark degli Antoni
Editor: Lily Baldwin & Sara Sowell
Video Installation Designer: Joe Seamans
Cinematographer: Ben Wolf
Assistant Camera: Sanjay Singh
Still Photographer: Courtney Denk
Hair Stylist: Takeo Suzuki
Makeup Artist: Hiro Yonemoto
Makeup Assistant: Ken Suzuki
Featuring designs by: PAVON NYC
PA: Rishauna Zumberg, Jaanelle Yee
Cast: Lily Baldwin, Henry Chesley, Geneva Frazier, Dean Melaas, Toni Melaas, Katharine Padulo, Wally Padulo, Angie Pittman, Peggy Schneider, Gus Solomons Jr., Amy Meisner Threet
