Cardboard Stage, a cross-media work featuring dance, video, live music, and spoken word, is a culmination of a two-year collaborative experiment in urban immersion. In 2016, Nicole Philippidis and her performers teamed up with cinematographer Jennifer Klein for a dance film, shot in a working perfume factory in The Bronx. Unexpectedly thrust into a diverse urban landscape – vibrant and gritty in equal measure – the choreographer was compelled to delve into social inequities still plaguing the American metropoles. The resulting work is a story about power and powerlessness, told in six chapters, focusing on different facets of urban life in the shadows of what lies in the glamorous spotlight of the mainstream media.

 

How does the privilege and lack of accountability perpetuate the status quo? How does the experience of disenfranchisement affect the sense of self-worth, but also the possibility of communicating with and relating to others? In close creative collaboration with a diverse cast of performers, Philippidis –  a native New Yorker and a keen observer of Big Apple’s intimate moments of communion and loneliness –  tackles these questions. The resulting piece works as a mirror, prompting the viewer to examine challenges facing the society based on a trickle-down power structure in a city overrun by gentrification and a country struggling to acknowledge and deal with the racial and economic rifts. 

 

The title of the piece alludes both to a homemade protest sign and to a makeshift performance area one sees in the streets of New York City. “When I think of cardboard, I think of all the people who boldly and bravely use it to build a platform to be heard,” explains Nicole Philippidis. 

 

Original music and the sound score created by John Philipidis (of the award-winning indie folk band Burlap to Cashmere) is an integral part of Cardboard Stage. Cardboard Stage uses both his original music created for the collaborative art dance film “Cardboard Concrete” and an additional sound score that Philippidis composed specifically for “Cardboard Stage”.  During 277’s run at Triskelion, Philippidis  will add another layer to the stark urban reality with his live performances of rhythmical percussion, keyboard and guitar. Intense physicality of Nicole Philippidis’ choreography is sculpted against the immersive video environment created by Jennifer Klein, who has been collaborating with the company on this project since its very inception in 2015.

 

Dancers: Stephen Galberth, Christopher Makens, Eric Parra, Elisa Schreiber, Emily Tellier and Mika Yanagihara. 

 

Choreography: Nicole Philippidis

Visual media / projections: Jennifer Klein

Music and Soundscape: John Philippidis

Spoken Word: Steven Delopoulos