JOHN KEENE on PARK at Freshkills

My colleague in Chicago, the novelist/poet/translator/critic John Keene, was among those who joined us at Freshkills for PARK on June 26 and writes generously about it on his blog:

"It was, to put it simply, unforgettable.  I'm no dance critic so I won't even try to describe it, but I did appreciate how the performance metaphorically and symbolically explored ideas concerning our consumerist, throwaway society and our relation to garbage/waste/debris, our (re-)constructions of 'nature,' 'land' and 'landscape,' our struggles to communicate, community and atomization in relation to the natural world and (human) bodies, and, throughout, the role of time, in a setting like this still-unfinished, still-transforming 'park.' Kathy Westwater's and Jennifer's performance of insideness and outsideness, and their conceptualization of participation, involving themselves, the performers, the audience, and the surrounding landscape--with the wind providing an ever-shifting soundtrack, as the videos attest--was also enlightening."

The full post, with videos and photos, is at the wonderful J's Theater, here.