Ordinary Devotions is a meditation-in-action on the ordinary/extraordinary life of the body (aging, yet resilient) and the world (tangible, yet ephemeral). An intimate drama of gesture and sensation unfolds alongside a bracingly unorthodox use of objects: e.g. a white vinyl tarp, a twig, stones, a lamp worn on the body, cassette tapes, and multiple spools of thread. Throughout, task-like activity yields to poetically and emotionally-charged movement, text, and image—evoking vulnerability and  hints of mortality. Beauty, humor, a bit of rebellious “orneriness”, and awkwardness all find their place in the precarious world of this dance, itself situated within a larger world apprehensive about its own survival. 

Choreography and performance: Linda Austin
Sound design and composition: Juniana Lanning
Video: Kelly Rauer

Composer and sound artist Juniana Lanning, colleced, digitally manipulated, and added to sounds drawn from the dancer’s deployment of objects as well as other real-world phenomena—a process mirroring Austin’s own attentiveness to the life of the material world. Kelly Rauer, whose practices also include movement and photography, created video interventions that enhance elements of the space’s architecture as well as bringing a rushing sensation of the outside world into the studio/theater.

This work honors the particularities of my sexegenarian body and its hunger for tactility, offering a sly provocation for audiences to experience the ephemeral materiality of their own bodies as well as the liveliness and glamour found in the ordinary. 

SONG:
I don’t know
why I am here with you
what the hell
is this thing I am doing
how will you feel
when I am gone?

Ordinary Devotions was created and developed with the support of a 2018 residency at the Ucross Foundation, made possible in part by an Oregon Arts Commission Career Opportunity Grant; as well as opportunities to try out material through the Movement Research at Judson Church series and Physical Education’s Say When Mini-Festival. The March 2019 performances at PWNW take place with the support of an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship as well as funding from the Autzen Foundation and the James R. and Marion L. Miller Foundation.