Lexi Vajda

Party Bizarre

Shooting Gallery Performance Series, Vancouver 2018

20 minutes

Created and performed by: Elissa Hanson and Lexi Vajda

Party Bizarre explores the multitude of ways we inhabit our mind/bodies in this world. It pulls on (y)our vulnerability and (y)our power, (y)our ecstasies and (y)our pains. The piece arises from what it means for us to create together, to make lists of our favorite music, our wants and needs in rehearsal, our ways of preparing together, our questioning of choreographic assumptions and the shared necessity to include all of ourselves in the dances we make. Party Bizarre takes a meta perspective in its exploration of what it means to produce a ‘show’ and to share that entertainment with a group of witnesses. The piece plays with theatrical devices such as party lights and projection, the virtuosity of the dancing, and various subgenres of pop music in order to interrogate how spectacle acts on us. In Party Bizarre, we explore how we compartmentalize our emotions into physical sensations and stress – how our bodies take stock of and remember experiences they have had on a cellular level.