The Circle

The Circle is a performative research project exploring the theme of women dancing in circles and by extension, the visual and social construction of sorority.

Throughout the summer, an anonymous group of self-identified women driving red cars periodically gathers on Laval streets and in parking lots to collectively perform scripted actions with their vehicles. These simple choreographies will explore the relationships between the gestural language of second-wave feminist protest culture, suburban motorsports, and classical dance, each of which uses formation, endurance, and collective circular movement as a form of gendered ritual that constructs community at the intersection of celebration and transgression.

The Circle exists as part of a larger body of work that loosely reproduces The Sacrifice, the second part of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rites of Spring, which contains a section entitled Cercles mystérieux des adolescentes. Matisse’s painting Dance, which famously depicts five red figures dancing in a landscape, is also referenced in the color of the cars, which exist as both costumes for—and extensions of—the participating women’s bodies.

Considered the “rehearsal” phase of the project, these summertime interventions feeds the development of a new site-specific performance work presented in summer 2021.