kelly keenan
dance artist
Useless Creatures
Useless Creatures (2012)
35 minutes
Choreography & Performance: Kelly Keenan & Kira Kirsch
Original Composition by David Drury
Presented at Studio 303, The Mission (San Francisco), BadAss Dance Fest/ EN WAVE (TO)
Useless Creatures explores the travesty of displaced species and the becoming of freaks. The work is inspired by asian flying carp, a non-native species introduced to the Mississippi River and Great Lakes which are now both an invasive environmental threat and tragic acrobatic spectacle. Kirsch and Keenan dissect delicate relationships in disturbed eco systems and create an absurd journey of comical, monstrous and phenomenal survival attempts. Useless Creatures is an intimate and physicalized portrait of the unwanted and a fractured relationship that oscillates between hyper-harmony and awkward estrangement.
photo by Andrea de Keijzer
“The space is dynamic not because it moves but because it has a latent force. The game between gravity attraction and the "nonchalance" of the touch makes it very surreal and "pregnant". The stops feel like small suspensions into intimacy yet they are unbearable because we donʼt know what they prefigure” (Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, 2012)
Excerpt https://vimeo.com/73281009