Shape of Memory

Shape of Memory explores collective & individual memory in the face of time’s unstoppable passage.

Fractured Atlas cannot currently accept donations for Shape of Memory because their fiscal sponsorship is inactive or expired. Please contact Shape of Memory with any questions.

Shape of Memory

Support SE | AE’s East coast tour of Shape of Memory, a roving, site-specific work about the ephemerality of dance and life and reclaiming things lost in the face of the unstoppable passage of time.

United States

$3,905 raised of $10,000 goal
30 donations
-3273708 minutes left

Fiscally Sponsored by Fractured Atlas

Sarah Elgart | Arrogant Elbow slays at INSITU & The Pillow!

Dear Wonderful Supporters,

We are back! I am so excited to give you all an update on our East Coast tour and performances at INSITU Site-Specific Dance Festival and Jacob's Pillow!

Mid-July I hit the ground running in NYC, spending a week holding auditions and finalizing a cast of 9 amazing dancers. They were an incredibly colorful, charismatic, and talented group ranging from NYC, LA, Israel, and beyond. We all went straight to work rehearsing, developing material and expanding on a sketch I built in LA, and finalizing notes for our score by Paul Chavez and Nels Cline. It was amazing to have the time to explore and really dig into the material.

INSITU Site-Specific Dance Festival arrived by the first weekend of August and we performed 7 times over two days for hundreds of people to resounding applause. The monumental scale of the Pepsi-Cola Sign at Long Island City waterfront is beyond inspiring and astonishing! You can see it as you come across the water riding the ferry.. a thrill all its own. We had a wonderful time performing there!

On Monday August 6th, all of us loaded into a van and drove to Jacob's Pillow where we jumped right into action rehearsing, figuring out site flow, and much more for the next four days (and a few nights). We were so fortunate to have Paul meet us there to help figure out the logistics of sound and speaker placement. Four days later we were on... Many hundreds of people sat and watched us on the Inside Out Stage and then nearly all of them followed us to three additional sites on the Pillow grounds watching the performance unfold... It was completely magical! The Pillow seemed astounded by the magnitude of people that actually left their seats to follow us! The audience's response was beyond powerful... People laughed, wept, and so many of them stayed for quite a while to share individual memories the work invoked in them. The next day Jacob's Pillow posted an amazing photo on Instagram (see below) saying "@arrogantelbow transcended the boundaries of dance in their site specific Inside/Out performance".

IMG_0330.jpg 174.5 KB

We are over the moon and beyond grateful to all of you for making all of this possible. It was an unprecedented and extremely successful "experiment" for Jacob's Pillow to have that many people travel through the grounds for a roving site work... they were thrilled! We simply could not have done it without you. Please view the attached trailer for a glimpse at our Pillow performance of Shape of Memory.

We are still striving to cover costs so please feel free to share this with friends and fellow dance enthusiasts! And please stay tuned as are now moving towards performing Shape of Memory at other significant sites in LA and beyond...

With immense gratitude,

Sarah

*all INSITU watermarked photographs by Stephen Delas Heras. Jacob's Pillow Instagram photo by Noor Eemaan

Inspired by the fact that light from a star is actually memory made visible, Shape of Memory is a roving, site-specific work that uses gravity, distance, and scale, to explore how memory inhabits the body and the self, the individual and the collective. What roles do modern and timeless iconography and myths have in influencing our individual and collective memories and decisions? As sentient human beings, how do our memories inhabit and shape our bodies?

With an original score by composer/guitarist Nels Cline of Wilco (one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of all time”), with Elgart’s frequent collaborator composer Paul Chavez of FeltLike, Shape of Memory is a work about the ephemerality of dance and life and about reclaiming things lost in the face of the unstoppable passage of time. The work seeks to create a new memory and leave a lingering “ghost imprint” in the collective consciousness of the audience’s experience.

Sarah Elgart | Arrogant Elbow engages audiences by transforming and catalyzing stages, screens, and sites, and painting them with singular visuals and visceral movement drawn from the quotidian human experience. Critically acclaimed, Elgart’s work has been called “Particularly masterly... Highly charged and emotionally riveting work” (Washington Post).

Your donation will help us bring SHAPE OF MEMORY to Jacob's Pillow, to INSITU Site-Specific Festival in NYC, and beyond! Thank you in advance for your support!