ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
1-800-359-2183592 is an experimental, interdisciplinary performance work by 14-member performance group CHILD. Tired of empty manufacturers’ promises of value and authenticity, S (spelled $ without the line), who works at her family-owned jewelry franchise DiFrederico’s at the Willow Grove Mall, decides to get out and find something more….um…. but the local news station reporting on the event confuses it with an incident of “exposing oneself to the sun.” A nearby herd of Zebras are ripping on guitars and as the shredding intensifies (earplugs provided) the jewelry store is dug out from inside a cake, offering sticky, ruined product to the audience to try and buy their brand loyalty. 1-800 exists in a gooey retail dynasty fantasia that seeps through the cracks of the narrative, searing the DiFrederico’s jingle into your memory. Despite its narrative map, this work does not function like a traditional play, nor is it a dance. Performers play characters as well as themselves, as well as entities such as a forest, or gum. Band members shift in and out of their roles. Dancers steal the videographer’s camera, while the videographer powderizes a mountain of eggshells. Welcome to the jewelry depot, it’s DiFrederico’s. 1-800-359-2183592, yeah.
CREATIVE TEAM
Angel Acuña (he/him)—Dancer/Performer
Matthew Antoci (they/them)—Assistant Director/Producer
Catherine Brookman (she/her)—Composer/Vocalist/Performer
Lena Engelstein (she/her)—Assistant Choreographer/Performer
Lisa Fagan (she/her)—Choreographer/Director
Kirsten Harvey (she/her)—Actor
Hannah Mitchell (she/her)—Actor
Emma Orme (she/her)—Producer
Ampersand Paris (they/she)—Dancer/Performer
Nathan Repasz (he/him)—Multi-Instrumentalist/Performer/Band Leader
Eriq Robinson (he/him)—Musician
Suz Sadler (they/them)—Video Artist
Maya Simone (they/them)—Dancer/Performer
Miles Toth (they/them)—Musician
Shannon Yu (no pronoun preference)—Dancer/Performer
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lisa Fagan is a choreographer, dancer, and director based in NYC whose work has been dubbed “The High Weird” by critics. She is also the director/choreographer and a practicing member of the experimental performance collective CHILD, a company of 14 multidisciplinary artists. UPCOMING: HILMA (choreographer), premiering June 2024 at The Wilma Theater, Deepe Darknesse (creator/performer) in New York Live Arts’ Live Artery Festival 2024. Fagan’s work has been presented in NYC by: Prelude Festival, Immediate Medium, Mercury Store, Radiohole, LifeWorld, Target Margin (2019/20 Artist in Residence with composer Catherine Brookman), HERE Arts Center, Bard College (Choreographer: Promenade, Dir. Morgan Green), The Exponential Festival (2019/20 Exponential Fellow), Mabou Mines (Resident Artist Program), Ars Nova (ANT FEST), New York Live Arts (2017/18 Fresh Tracks Artist), Movement Research, Gibney, Roulette, The 92nd Street Y, and others. She collaborates with many artists across disciplines supporting their shows choreographically and as movement director. On-screen choreography credits include the TV pilot THESE DAYS, premiering at Sundance 2021, and various music videos. www.lisafagandanceproblems.com @lfdanceproblems
BARYSHNIKOV ARTS OPEN STORY
Dance of the Commodities
by Eric Dean Wilson
On November 10, 2023, I attended a rehearsal of 1-800-359-2183592, an experimental, interdisciplinary performance work by 14-member performance group CHILD, as part of Lisa Fagan’s BAC Open artist’s residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center. CHILD’s residency culminated in a public showing at BAC the following week, which I also attended. In response, I wrote this lyric essay.
1
A 1996 photograph by German artist Andreas Gursky draws an aesthetic I can only think to call “mall sublime.” The image features two shelves—both comically long—lined with pairs of high-heeled shoes on an otherwise bare wall. The walls and shelves are mint green. The floor is dull pink, carpeted. The shoes are glowing, illuminated by an unseen source of light, a dream made real. Are they sacred objects, idols to be worshipped? (Yes: they are luxury fashion items.) There are no customers.
It is like a window onto an alien mothership. Or else it is a museum exhibit in the Alpha Centauri star system whose wall text asks, with mild disinterest, “What was the human race?”
Its title is “Prada I.”
2
There is a mall. Surrounding it, like the treacherous moat of a castle, is a parking lot, seemingly endless, pocked by lighting poles and basket corrals. White lines mark the rows of spaces, ordered like graves. A fog rolls in. Soon the movement will begin. The lot is empty now, but soon it will be full.
“Full” is not the right word. There is space for everyone. (Do worn out words have warranties?)
It is Monday.
3
In a rehearsal at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Lisa Fagan directs the performance ensemble called CHILD. They balance lavender two-by-fours on their heads as they walk slowly across the space. Each board serves as a shelf for a single high-heeled shoe. The performers chew gum, each jaw unhinging and plunging toward the floor before rising into a chomp. They hold objects in their hands: a newspaper, an empty Dunkin’ Donuts box, a ping pong paddle, a concierge bell. They step, progressing like hypnotics.
From offstage, Lisa tells the performers to consider how they are using the objects. “Is it the thing it is?” she asks. The performers look at her. “Or is it a different thing? That’s my question for you.”
One performer lifts the lid of the Dunkin’ box and begins to “type” as if on a laptop.
Somewhere, a bell dings.
4
You are there. You live there. You work there. A dot on the map of the shopping center. It is Tuesday. You cannot leave. (But you should not want to leave. Why would you want to leave?) Here, there is everything you need. Here, there is everything you could possibly need. (Why would you ever leave? Why? Why would you ever want to leave?)
(Anyway, you can’t. There is no outside.)
5
A salesclerk stands in an empty room of the Willow Grove Mall. She holds a smile on her face and her hands to her chest, fussing with her fingers. She is unable to relax. She paces anxiously at the borders. (Because what is a salesclerk stripped of her merchandise?) She stumbles in heels, as if they are three sizes too big, as if the shoes are attempting to mutiny from her feet. But she believes in her role. She will force it. She was trained for this. A little too eager, she confronts a customer, a group of customers, an opportunity to showcase her worth.
She speaks: “Let me know if you have any questions!”
6
How did we get here? How did we snuff the light of celestial bodies? How did we trade the moonlight for the fluorescent glow of the Best Buy sign? How did we skin the earth and dress it in asphalt? How did we empty the ground of its treasure and build this kingdom of nothing? How did we entomb ourselves in concrete boxes surrounded by shining goods, as if readying ourselves for death?
Those are the questions that CHILD asks. Mine, too.
Can you answer them for me?
7
A TV returns from a commercial break with breaking news. Anchor Hudson Ross reminds us that today is Wednesday and it is also Thursday.
The news: Equinox will open a new hotel fully activating the culture and layout of the Equinox franchise. Equinox Hotel rooms will start at $814 per night and offer a menu of amenities including 24/7 gym access, skylight saunas on the roof deck, heated and lit swimming pools, and childcare. (Why would you ever want to leave?)
On their website, Equinox describes each of its rooms as “a temple to total regeneration.” They insist that “the difference is in the details, borrowed from residential living at its most sublime.” And: “Designed to meet every need, our proprietary sleep system ensures that every night is a dream come true, leaving you primed to perform in ways you never thought possible.” A “frictionless exaltation,” someone describes it.
A temple. Sublime. Primed. The impossible made possible. A dream come true.
A dream come true means a disavowal of the world as it is. A fantasy of a planet without limitations.
It is difficult, sometimes, to distinguish the commercial break from breaking news, the dream from waking life.
8
In the mall is a jewelry store. Every morning you walk there. Past the Zara, the Aeropostale, the L’Occitane en Provence, the Victoria’s Secret. You stop briefly at the interior courtyard, where you sunbathe for five minutes, your only connection to the natural world. (There are no groves of willows at the mall.) The sunrays hit your skin. I love nature, you think, remembering trees. Then, you leave the courtyard, past the food court, past the Sbarro, the Panda Express, and the Taco Bell, where you will order your lunch gordita and orgasm alone.
Recovering, you resume the journey to your place of work: DiFrederico’s Jewelry Store.
9
A pharmaceutical commercial for anxiety medication is interrupted by another commercial. A band plays a jingle that you somehow already know, that is somehow already stuck in your head. On Friday, when you are alone and the TV is off, you will still hear the band play it—as you wash the dishes, as you shower, as you walk your dead dog, as you sit with your partner who gives off a “dead” vibe. You will act annoyed that you cannot get this jingle out of your head, but, really, you are comforted. It lives inside you now. There is room enough there. You will never be alone. You will always have the jingle.
It goes:
Come up to the jewelry depot.
It’s DiFrederico’s!
1-800-359-2183592.
Yeah!
10
Zebra-striped suits hang on a rolling rack at the edge of the performance space. The number and uniformity of the hides recall a department store sales rack. Even when still, the rack seems to move on its own.
Slowly, each performer removes a zebra suit from its hanger and pulls it over their street clothes. It signifies nothing but a new skin, black stripes ripped across white as if restless tears into a void. New, new, new, new.
I have more questions: Who died for it? Whose life was skinned and tanned and stretched so that we might paper over our anxiety?
11
Is it the thing it is? Or is it a different thing? That is the question.
Karl Marx once described the peculiar way that capitalism animates the lifeless. In his example, a wooden table, when transformed into a commodity, “changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will.”
The table dances. The newspapers, the necklaces, the shoes, the boxes of rings—all dance. A ballet of grotesque ideas.
But you know this already. You live here. You have lived here your whole life.
12
The salesclerk trips toward the audience in cheetah-print heels, as if possessed by the spirit of the cheetah. She smiles. The smile appears to hold her together. She sees that we are looking at the back wall of the performance space, a concrete pillar. The pillar appears to hold the building together. Would we like it? Would we like to see the pillar in a smaller size? It comes in a smaller size. Do not worry about transporting it home. She will take care of that. It is from an exclusive line of pillars, and it could be ours.
She shouts to no one, “LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED ANYTHING,” the familiar cry of the wild salesclerk.
She does not offer to provide. She wants only to know.
We need many things in this world, from this world.
But the salesclerk cannot help us there.
13
Monday. New day. Start again. Same thing. Same day, same matter. Junk words, junk stuff, junk life. No matter. Make it. Make the gesture. Pick up. Break out. Break out of the spot. There is no outside, but no matter. Stretch it. Stretch it as thin as you can. Stretch it as thin as it will go. Just because. Just because. Just because. Soon. The whole thing will shatter.
This project was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Produced in association with Immediate Medium’s AGENCY program. CHILD has been supported by developmental residencies at: Bard College, Mercury Store, and Target Margin Theater.
Top photo by Maria Baranova.