Search for Flame/Jupiter

Lindsey Taylor

Act I: Search for Flame, based on the 1981 film, Quest for Fire, employs dance and projection to enact the saga of warring tribes of early human species in their search for life-giving fire. The piece is set to Don Sebasky’s saxophone heavy rendition of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. A female soloist demonstrates how to produce the coveted element, ushering the bewildered cast into a dream state of genteel society in which posture becomes rigid and gesture meaning-laden. As the sapiens snap out of the fantasy, they sense the absurdity and discover laughter for the first time. In an instant, an enemy tribe ambushes and destroys them, along with their flame, thus ensuring death for everyone.

Act II: Jupiter, takes place in the far future where other planets in our solar system are being terraformed as Earth takes her final breath. An all female colony engages in ecstatic celebration based around an unfamiliar extra terrestrial holiday. Isao Tomita’s 1976 electronic rendition of Holst’s Jupiter sets the tone. The joyous celebration is interrupted by a transmission. The rulers of the Cosmos are delivering a personal message of congratulations on their success as a colony, followed by a ceremonial dance of reverence.

From Fusebox In the 1981 cult film Quest for Fire the oldest-known men are in search of fire and luckily for them, they find a woman who has some. In her dance Search for Flame/Jupiter, Lindsey Taylor takes this campy film and its bizarre gender dynamics and fuses it with a dispatch from a far flung, cosmic future of an all female world order threatened but trying to thrive. This mash-up of genre and epoch, along with contemporary covers of classical music sends us rocketing from patriarchal dark ages to a flickering feminist future. The question is, will the flame stay burning? If Taylor’s work is any guide, the flame will be burning for a long time.

CREATIVE TEAM

Choreography by: Lindsey Taylor Visuals by: Stephen Fishman