The Bipeds Dance Company presents “54 Strange Words"

The Task Before Us: Welcome to the official fundraising headquarters of The Bipeds Dance Theatre Company! We are here to finance the production of the ambitious, cross-disciplinary performance that will be the highlight of our 2018 season! “54 Strange Words” will be make its world premiere at The Durham Fruit & Produce Company from June 21-24.

Who We Are: The Bipeds is a dance-theater company under the artistic direction of choreographer/dancer Stacy Wolfson and banjo-player/songwriter Curtis Eller. Wolfson and Eller have devised a unique compositional approach that seamlessly combines movement, music and lyrics to create a peculiar and compelling hybrid of dance and song. They cast the finished pieces with dancers and musicians possessing the curiosity, technical proficiency and requisite disdain for boundaries to delve into one another's mediums. Musicians become dancers, dancers become singers, and unhinged howls of wild abandon give way to moments of harmony and grace. thebipedsdance.weebly.com

The Expanding Bipeds: Wolfson and Eller have spent a year developing a series of music/dance duets which they have showcased in a variety of theaters, festivals and music venues in North Carolina, Virginia and New York. The performative vocabulary generated during the development of these pieces serves as the basis for “54 Strange Words”, for which the company has grown to include a scorching rock & roll band and  a cast of viscerally expressive dancers.

Nightmare Imagery: The show's imagery is drawn from a series of nightmares and the failure of language to adequately express the unsettling visions. Events unfold in a hallucinatory landscape of biomorphic abstraction and linguistic confusion. Movement, music and lyrics emerge as the only effective methods of illuminating the mysterious world in which the performers find themselves. The theme of the work has proven well suited to the company's collaborative approach, and The Bipeds have assembled an ensemble of performers, designers and filmmakers who will be crucial to bringing this production to the stage.

The Movie and the Record: In the year leading up to the show's premiere, The Bipeds have produced a soundtrack album and several short companion videos. The videos were shot and directed by award-winning filmmakers Jim Haverkamp and Alex Maness of Shadowbox Studio, and the album was recorded by acclaimed producer Joseph Dejarnette of Studio 808A. 

Performers & Designers:

Jessi Knight (dance, vocals) 

Bill Commander (dance, vocals)

Stacy Wolfson (dance, vocals)

Curtis Eller (banjo, vocals, dance)

Dana Marks (vocals, movement, stilt-walking)

Jack Fleishman (drums, bass VI, guitar)

Joseph Dejarnette (bass, recording engineer, producer)

Alex Manness (lighting designer, videographer, film director) 

Jim Haverkamp (videographer, film director)

Gabriel Anderson (drums)

The Rewards: Rewards for project backers range from tickets to the show, digital and physical copies of the soundtrack album and Bipeds t-shirts. You can even hire The Bipeds to perform at your festival, venue or event!