What is failure, and how do we deal with it – as individuals, and as communities? In the new installation/performance FAILURE, choreographer and visual artist Laura Peterson uses the language of dance and sculptural design to probe the national consciousness in the aftermath of 2016 Presidential election. Peterson zeroes in on the overwhelming pressure to compete, which is at the heart of the American way of life. Is a small defeat less devastating than a colossal mistake? What is the real outcome of the “winner takes all?”

How do we experience the inevitable physical deterioration of our bodies, and does it haunt us? How do we respond to it, and how might it change us? Notably, our experience of that decay, as we strive, as we find ways to survive, is a corporeal one, and our spirit may continue to fight long after the body is no longer able. Also, importantly, it is a relative one: I only sense how sad my sagging, limp chest is when I see him over there looking so perked and great. Laura Peterson, the choreographer behind Failure, an impressive work that had a short run at the legendary Judson Memorial, in her statement of the piece suggests that in response to this physical decline, we burrow into materialism and negativity. Because we no longer even resemble the mimetic image of ourselves — and not just physically, but intellectually or professionally or romantically or anything — we cling to literal and figurative objects that make up for the loss, and we resemble a life. This thesis is persuasive, and I think possesses the compelling effect of seeming self-evident. But her dance, which is frankly more structural than theoretical, is truly about the sustainability and will of the physical body, a …Read more