Alternating Reality began in January of 2020 with night rehearsals in Studio 390 and 370 at OSU. The five collaborators, Sarah Bodony, Simone Burnett, Thaliyah Cools-Lartigue, Abby Koskinas, Sophia Smith and I created movement from improvisation, from ideas of technological buzzwords living in the body, from reckoning with the compression of emotion and relationships into a phone, a computer, a screen. We played with the game telephone, passing on whispers, and dancing close and with vigor. March of 2020 brought about a halt, a shift, a pivot. Fall 2020 semester saw us outside in the dance department tent, re-translating, re-configuring. A Zoom rehearsal compressed the movement into living rooms and kitchens. After months, the material took on new shape. How was the past (the dream of a close, intimate, audience-interactive piece) still lingering in the air around the movement? How are the phrases that used to be translated from an Isadora screen and now printed on papers, instead of whispered, changed? A full year after starting the piece, the dance artists have deeper relationships with each other, deeper understanding of the material, and a feeling of what could have been. The remnants of the previous versions lingered in the space while the urgency of the five dancers depending on each other’s knowledge rang clear.
