“At the car wash…talking about the car wash…” that’s what audiences will be doing on Saturday, May 7th, when the Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre stages a classic dance performance at the Santa Palm car wash in West Hollywood.
Presented in part with a grant from City of West Hollywood and its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission through WeHo Arts (www.weho.org/arts), and support from Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, this exciting piece features four dancers staged on a vintage 1970s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The Cadillac is more than a stage and a prop – the percussion trio Antenna Repairman will be miking it and using the car as an instrument, too.
Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre creates deeply innovative dance experiences in non-traditional, site-specific locations, inviting its audience and artists to connect with their community in a fresh way. Duckler founded the troop in 1985, and the choreographer has earned the moniker “reigning queen of site specific performance.” Each staging is a contemporary art experience that integrates audience and performers.
Duckler has created more than 200 dance pieces around the world, receiving awards from the City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs, the California Arts Council, and the National Endowment of the Arts. With original percussionists Bob Fernandez and MB Gordy of Antenna Repairman still performing, Duckler felt the time was right to re-stage “Parts & Labor.”
Originally performed in 1993, “Parts & Labor” explores our love/hate relationship with cars, and our dependency on them. The theme is more timely than ever, as LA highways grow increasingly congested and alternative transportation becomes more and more relevant. The piece was originally performed in a Studio City car lot, where dancers performed on an amplified Cadillac, a used car salesman tried to sell Caddys to the audience, and vintage film clips of Detroit’s view of the future screened in the background.
Percussionist Fernandez came up with the original idea to mic the car as a resonant instrument after visiting Cuba and noting the metal in pre-60s era vehicles driven there.
The 1992 performance featured four women in long black veils cradling gas pump nozzles, then changing into doctors’ scrubs, with the Cadillac going into labor and giving birth to a hood ornament. The current iteration will focus on the car as a symbol of freedom, as well as having the potential for entrapment.
“We live in our cars,” Duckler notes. “The car is our home.”
This Saturday’s car wash location should also add a new look to the piece. “It’s more about relationships,” Duckler relates.
Combining exciting rhythm with progressive dance in a wide range of local settings is hardly a first for Duckler, who has been creating pieces and setting them in locales from the Los Angeles River basin to laundromats for decades.
Check out her new vision for “Parts & Labor” this weekend, and be prepared for one “driving” evening of stellar dance and riveting rhythm.
“Parts & Labor” will be performed May 7, 2016, at 8 p.m. in the Santa Palm Car Wash, located at 8787 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood.
See http://bit.ly/hddtpartsandlabor for more information and to purchase tickets. Tickets will be available at the door as well, until sold out.
Visit http://www.heididuckler.org/ for more information about the full range of programming planned by this innovative dance group.