Monday, September 17, 2012

letting go


photo of Helanius J. Wilkins by Sadar Aziz 

Once in a while there is a performance that grips me, takes me by surprise, and leads me into unexplored places that both inspire and challenge. That performance happened last night at Dance Place when Helanius J. Wilkins presented /CLOSE/R.

What made this experience even more powerful was that I had seen different iterations of this work since I serve as his thesis project advisor at George Washington University. I met Helanius a year ago when he was a student in a MFA course I taught at GWU called “Contemporary Performance & Criticism.” Instantly I was drawn to his thinking: perceptive, critical, creative.