THE VANISHING POINT

(2021)

A digital commission for National Sawdust’s 2021 season Body/Space

A collaboration between experimental musicians Lisel (Eliza Bagg), Booker Stardrum, dancer/choreographer Gwendolyn Gussman, and lighting/cinematographer, Alex Taylor; The Vanishing Point is a work of video music-dance theatre.

Created across the distances of the COVID era, The Vanishing Point spirals in the anxious euphoria and isolation of our time. A lonely body in uncanny spaces is accompanied only by digital manipulations and iterations of her own form. The piece meditates on the chaos of cyberspace and the destruction of the oceans, atmosphere, and trees, and our own culpability in precipitating these events. For Gwendolyn Gussman, this work is an exploration of urgency, even when she's taking her time. Her movement oscillates between tension and fluidity, momentum and resistance, reaching towards something that may be too far gone. 

 Working collaboratively, Booker Stardrum and Lisel have co-composed 25 minutes of music for dance. The work brings together Stardrum’s textural electronic production and percussion with the sweeping, ethereal world of Lisel’s “fractured, futurist form of pop” (WNYC). 

The Vanishing Point a new work commissioned by National Sawdust for their 2021 digital season, Body/Space. National Sawdust's 2021 season, BODY / SPACE, celebrates creative and intellectual innovation, reinventing performance for the virtual stage.

The season includes work by other notable artists such as Rhye & Sonya Tayeh with American Ballet Theater, Galya Bisengalieva and Sana Serkebaeva, Amy Hall Garner, Brianna Mims, Molly Joyce with Jerron Herman, Max Greyson, and Austin Regan, Marisa Michelson and Miriam Parker, and others.

The Vanishing Point can be viewed for free in it’s entirety at:

https://live.nationalsawdust.org/event/the-vanishing-point-eliza-bagg-gwendolyn-gussman-booker-stardrum-and-alex-taylor