A large crowd of families with children attended The Naked Stark’s work in progress showing of Bodies of Water at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. The company programmed the event to be accessible for families, scheduling it at midday and dividing it into three short sections: a live dance performance; Remanents, a film capturing the process; and a space featuring water themed activities including Bingo featuring experiences you’ve had with water, books to read, and a projected map of Philadelphia with rivers to trace.
We were led down a winding path through the museum, catching glimpses of the Schuylkill river through small windows, partially blocked by plants growing right outside them. Andy Thierauf’s soft synthboard and wind melodies drifted along the corridors and eventually filled the performance space. We stood above a large stained empty holding tank with a concrete divider through the middle and limited seating at each end of the tank. Six dancers laid languidly between the two pools, perched on the concrete ledge with iron struts running down the middle. They started to slowly stretch and roll, parts of their bodies suspended over the edge. They rose linearly, tracing the lines of the support structures and rigid concrete of the space with their arms and the trunks of their bodies. They all reached up towards the ceiling in unison and then let their arms fall slowly down. This meditative beginning had me noticing the dance space closely, and drew me towards its architecture.
Each dancer went through a set of sharp mechanical gestures ,starting at different points in the order, creating a complex machine that synced up at a one armed reach towards the ceiling. I saw this as alluding to the mechanics needed to power the water wheels of Fairmount, and found it quite satisfying. The dancers then became the water, sliding down the walls and using their feet or hands to propel forwards into the empty pool and roll or sweep along the floor.
Together, they propelled each other over the divide between the pools, gathering into a messy huddle of bodies that rolled forwards like droplets of water down a car window. One person at a time would emerge and then retreat into the mass as they crawled slowly across the second pool. They inhabited the empty pool as the water that once was. They listened to the space, using its levels and qualities to inspire their choreography while sticking to a clearly modern/ballet inspired aesthetic. They left us with a kind of slam poetry amalgamation of words from their process: “Depart, fragility, love, choose, live unfixed melting risk” were some. This felt like the jumping off point for the next iteration, seeing how words might add different associations and meanings to the work, although it stood on its own without them. The next iteration of the Naked Stark’s Bodies of Water is set to premiere in September 2026, and will be a result of a continued residency with Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center.
Bodies of Water, The Naked Stark, Fairmount Waterworks Interpretive Center, Philadelphia Fringe, September 27th.
