Introduction

Upcoming Performance and Ticket Information

About The Farthest Earth From Thee

Commissioned by VSA arts, The Farthest Earth From Thee is an original work inspired by William Shakespeare’s sonnets. The production features company and guest dancers with and without disabilities. Shakespeare revealed intense, intimate, and moving relationships through his sonnets.  This collection of contemporary dances transforms his words into explosive movement and vibrant video images.

The Farthest Earth From Thee had its origins as part of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “Shakespeare in Washington Festival,” Washington, DC. 

VSAarts is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Artistic and Production Consultation Courtesy of Open Circle Theater

February 14, 15, 16 , 2008

Georgetown University

Royden B. Davis, S.J. Performing Arts Center

Gonda Theatre

Washington, DC

About The Farthest Earth From Thee

While people usually think of choreographers employing music as the inspiration for movement, we at the Dance Exchange often begin with words, their multiple meanings, their sounds, and the metaphors they suggest. We have many techniques for shaping this material into movement, which we can then sequence into longer phrases and explore as a full dance vocabulary.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 44 for instance, gives us some obvious places to start for dance. Its references to “leap large lengths,” “injurious distance,” and “heavy tears” might lead us to seek 20 ways, both obvious and unexpected, of turning each of those phrases into motion. Also inspiring are the image polarities of sea and land, earth and water. But the ultimate, juicy challenge of this sonnet will likely be in what it says about the limits of physicality. That is where we find the true possibility for movement, partnering, imagery, and staging. That is where we find the permission for fantasy.

SONNET 44

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,

Injurious distance should not stop my way;

For then despite of space I would be brought,

From limits far remote where thou dost stay.

No matter then although my foot did stand

Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land

As soon as think the place where he would be.

But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,

To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,

But that so much of earth and water wrought

I must attend time's leisure with my moan,

Receiving nought by elements so slow

But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

Will we continue to explore all the sonnets in the same way? Probably not. We will add our individual movement answers to our questions, and bring our process to a varied cast of people – many of them new to us – who will offer back whole new waves of thought and response.

We look forward to staging in and around the idea of people on wheels, as a metaphor for the cycle of love and the seasons of life, and for the keening, off-center state of being one feels in certain kinds of love. We’ll be challenging our cast by employing a variety of wheeled vehicles, which may include skateboards, bodyboards, rolling stair units, bicycles, and Segways. We are excited about the dance potential of all these vehicles and confident that it will be rich metaphor with which to start our process.