Berlin-based, Dominican-American performer and choreographer Ligia Lewis returns to Chicago with her acclaimed Water Will (in Melody), the final chapter of a three-part performance series, BLUE RED WHITE, based on the colors of the American flag.
Set on a dark, wet stage, four dancers perform choreography influenced by melodrama, minstrelsy, and mime, presented in fragments and abstractions of their traditional forms. The performers toggle between fully articulated movements and movements restricted by unseen and traumatic forces. Drawing on the lesser known Brothers Grimm fairytale, The Willful Child, the title Water Will plays on the concept of will, and its forms in willfulness and inevitable fate. Implied in the dancers’ white and black latex costumes, the performance grapples with the color white and its associations in both aesthetic and civic spaces, and the current of white supremacy in society. Punctuated by haunting spoken word, lighting, and mist, Water Will (in Melody) resists the notions of consensus and conclusion, inviting other ways of experiencing the world. This performance contains strobe lighting, loud sounds, water-based fog effects, brief nudity, and sexually suggestive gestures.
