Dark and Pretty Flat

Oct 20, 2014 Dixon Place
DARK AND PRETTY FLAT
Choreography and Direction by Esmé Boyce
Music Composition, Performance and Prose by Cody Boyce
Dancers: Esmé Boyce, Giulia Carotenuto, Kit McDaniel, Christopher Ralph
Musicians: Cody Boyce, Talice Lee, Morgan Vo, Ted Levine
Set Design: Chat Travieso
Costume Design: Sue Julien

DARK AND PRETTY FLAT
I. An Endless Ringing in My Ears
II. Night Waters
III. Between Cities
IV. Wear Away Patterns
V. Through the Windshield
VI. The Walking Man
VII. Flat and Dark

My parents were driving from L.A. to New York, in a cross-country move that would reunite our family. They were in Oklahoma, or at least my mom thinks so, when I texted her, “What’s it like there?” Her reply was, “Dark and Pretty Flat.” Referencing the genre of the Western, this piece is about an American attachment to vast lands, about great horizontal journeys and about how one can feel like a foreigner in one’s own homeland. My brother, Cody, and I were processing memories and emotions involved with the second relocation of our family. As children, we moved from Chicago to LA, a life-altering jolt. Somehow the second move, leaving LA, was quieter as both of us were adults living in New York when it happened but it was equally strange. Dark and Pretty Flat, in many ways, is our way of acknowledging a big chunk of our lives, our formative years, spent in the West. —Esmé Boyce