“The Most Innovative is an embodied live thing and an intellectual map. It’s vulnerable and a manifesto. It’s cocky, feminist, and questioning. O’Neal’s hit a stage when she’s strong enough to be personal and topical and aesthetic and even entertaining, all at the same time. Now go already.”
The Most Innovative, Daring, and Original Piece of Dance/Performance You Will See this Decade is an evening length solo structured like a non-verbal lecture demonstration or physical essay. The performance deals with hype, the sampling nature of creativity, racial and sexual stereotypes and asks the questions “Are we damned for selling ourselves in a culture where we are expected to?”, “Where is the line between having power over another and being empowered”, and “How do we set ourselves apart when everything is a remix?” Amy O deconstructs some of her past and current influences, uses “the ass” as a study in cultural identity, and begins a public dialogue with her relationship to Black culture.
Evening length premiere:
October 12-14 and 19-21 2012 at Velocity Dance Center – Seattle WA
Tour performance:
May 2014 Walking Distance Festival at ODC - San Francisco, CA
Read Amy O’s essay, “Occupy Your Ass”
Work in Progress performances:
October 28-29th 2011 at Velocity Dance Center -Seattle WA
February 17-19 2012 Memphis, TN
March 31st 2012 Portland, OR
September 6th 2012 Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle WA
Artist talk on the process of the work: December 10th 2011 The Project Room – Seattle WA
The Most Innovative, Daring and Original Piece of Dance/Performance You Will See this Decade was commissioned by Velocity Dance Center’s Made in Seattle program and made possible through Velocity’s Artist in Residence program and a residency at On the Boards. Velocity’s presentation of “The Most Innovative, Daring, and Original Piece of Dance / Performance You Will See this Decade” is made possible by The Boeing Company, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation.”
Amy O successfully raised funds for this work on USA Projects.
Photos below by Gabriel Bienczycki and Bruce Clayton Tom.
