An upright metal grid of cut steel pipe bisects a table, and steel rods — sharpened to a spike — are prepared in rows. The dancers of Susan Marshall & Company pay careful attention to speed, force, and precision, while navigating dangerously sharp edges of Martha Friedman’s new sculpture, Some Hags.
The spikes are pushed into the holes, audibly clinking against the metal, and long, fleshy, rubber tubes in various colors are floppily attached to and unleashed from the open pipes. The evolving patterns of action and design explore the tensions between violence and intimacy, work and product, connection and severing, efficiency and waste, soft and hard.
Marshall & Company’s performance of this their newest dance piece, Two Person Operating System, will activate the sculpture.
Photo: Jeremy Olson
Two Person Operating System | Susan Marshall & Company, Martha Friedman, sculptor | Institute of Fine Arts, New York City | Nov 16, 19