SHOW PONY
Choreography/Performers: rick h m & Madison Palffy
Music: Patti Smith, New Radicals
Text: Maureen Medved
Performed on December 7, 2019 at the Charlotte York Irey Theatre at the University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, CO.) Part of FRESH: Fall 2019.
𝕊𝕙𝕠𝕨 ℙ𝕠𝕟𝕪 is a collaborative work by Madison Palffy and rick h m. The two explore the embodied pleasures and connections afforded through a commitment to abandon, artifice, and kitsch. Weaving dance improvisational scores with set choreographic phrases, rick and Madison attempt to access a pseudo-horse consciousness (inspired by Anna Sewell's Black Beauty), performatively disidentifying across species towards imagining, and proposing, embodied im/possibilities. The performers layer an excess of materials (satin slips, ill-fitting blonde wigs, hobby horses, tap shoes, and an illusory desert sunset) in accessing the surreal to realize their horse-imagistic aims. The performers additionally call for audience members to join their corral in utilizing a line dance as a means of invoking community and empathic transmission.