Curved Spacetimes: Where Friedrich Nietzsche Meets Virginia Woolf
An evening of dance and philosophy, presented by The Tank
Sunday, March 17, 2019 | 6–9 PM
The Tank
312 W 36th St
New York City
Buy tickets here
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’”—Nietzsche’s possibility of time’s arrow looping back on itself structures Logos Dance Collective’s production Curved Spacetimes: Where Friedrich Nietzsche Meets Virginia Woolf, in which movement, music and the spoken word guide audience members through the eternal return, wherein they encounter Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, who embraces the demon’s proposal in her love of “life; London; this moment in June,” seeming to offer a Nietzschean “yes to life” and to “see beauty in that which is necessary.”
While dancers’ bodies tell spacetime how to curve and curved spacetime tells dancers’ bodies how to move, the multidisciplinary performance toys with our experience of the past as it is realized in memory, of the present as we hold it in attention, and of the future as it is captured by anticipation; it explores the possibility of time reversal and the way in which time seems to speed up as we age; and it offers a glimpse of what it means to embrace fate.
Schedule of Events:
6 PM: Pre-performance catered
7 PM: Performance
8 PM: Panel discussion on the physics, aesthetics, and metaphysics of time
Artistic Collaborations
Choreography: Logos Dance Collective (Barbara Gail Montero, Theresa Duhon, Patra Jongjitirat, and Gregory Kollarus)
Performers: Elise Crull, Theresa Duhon, Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes, Patra Jongjitirat, Gregory Kollarus, Barbara Gail Montero, and Nickolas Pappas
Music: Selections from Bach’s Cello Suites, performed live by cellist Ivan Luza
Text: Excerpts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Diary of Virginia Woolf, compiled and adapted by Patra Jongjitirat and Barbara Gail Montero
Costumes: Sarah Blumenfeld
Philosophy Panelists
Jeff Friedman, Associate Professor of Dance & Director, MFA Dance Program, Rutgers University
Kathleen Higgins, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Tim Maudlin, Professor of Philosophy, New York University
Heather Whitney, JD, Harvard Law School & PhD Candidate, New York University
Moderator: Rebecca Ariel Porte, Core Faculty, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
This performance is based on work originally developed and presented as part of Take Root at Green Space, September 20–21, 2018.
Design: As the Crow Walks
Illustration: Marcellus Hall
