ABOUT THE RESIDENCY
POOL is a fusion of performance, visual art, and documentary that explores the male gaze, self-objectification, and the way power shifts as we move between looking, seeing, and being seen. In a society in which self-objectification of the feminine is both encouraged and derided by the dominant culture and its critics alike, internalized oppression is erased. POOL sets out to bring this intergenerational wounding into view.
Conceived as a study for Susan Marshall’s 2018 PROTOTYPES, POOL will premiere in June 2023 at the Rehearsal for Truth Festival.
In POOL, the unmet needs of patriarchy’s citizens are isolated, magnified and transferred into a system in which the characters struggle with perceived deficits according to an unexpected set of rules. Four performers engage in a triptych of performances between rows of Barbies. There are two men competing to satisfy their own narcissism, a ghost of a woman whose shattered identity lives among the infinite gazes of men, and a young girl whose solid, stable presence throws into high relief the others’ disturbances. Despite sharing the same space, the performers can only connect with each other through the Barbies, who are simultaneously chess pieces, fallen and aspirational identities, battlefields, and plastic debris.
CREATIVE TEAM
Denisa Musilová—Choreographer and Performer
Mark DeChiazza—Performer and Dramaturg
Aleš Kauer—Music
John Mosloskie—Sound Design
Tom Rychetsky—Performer
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Denisa Musilova is an award-winning performer and choreographer, creating live, introspective, movement-based experiences in which psychological struggles are given physical form.
Her authorial works have been co-produced and presented at the Tank, Dixon Place, Next@Graham, NY Butoh Festival, Movement Research, Czech Center, Triskelion Arts, 92nd Street Y, LATEA Theater, Triskelion Arts, La MaMa, SOAK Festival, Venuše ve Švehlovce Theater and Theater Akropolis Prague.
She has choreographed “Swing Heil” directed by Iveta Ditte Jurčová; the musical “Branicky Zazrak,” directed by Academy Award-winning director Jan Sverak; “Quixote,” directed by Mark DeChiazza for Peak Performances at Montclair State University; and Amy Beth Kristen’s “Savior,” which premiered at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Musilova was commissioned to present a new work for Susan Marshall’s 2018 Prototypes and performed at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Gala in 2019.
Currently, Musilova works as a guest choreographer for the Horacké Theater Jihlava, where she has staged multiple plays, working with prominent theater directors including Dodo Gombar, Michal Zetel, and Rastislav Ballek. In the Czech Republic, Musilova has danced in the production of “Viva La Mama” at the National Theater in Prague, as well as collaborated on new choreographies for DEKKADANCERS, Theater Bílá Holubice, and Tantehorse.
Mark DeChiazza is a director whose multifaceted practice includes filmmaking, choreography, scenic and media design, and installation. His work has been presented in national and international venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, John F. Kennedy Center of the Arts, Guthrie Theater, Singapore International Festival of Arts, Prototype Festival, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, The Momentary, Walton Arts Center, and many more.
His large-scale outdoor works include Look Around (2019) a co-creation with composer Shara Nova, that featured the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and over 600 additional performers from over 30 local groups, and direction and design of John Luther Adams’ Sila (2016) for Lincoln Center Festival and Mostly Mozart.
Past projects include: Ocean Body, a 4-screen film and music installation he co-created with performers Helga Davis and Shara Nova, Dan Trueman’s Olagón, with singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and Eighth Blackbird ensemble; Quixote, a music-theater epic with composer Amy Beth Kirsten; Orpheus Unsung, a music-dance work with Steven Mackey; My Lai, an opera by Jonathan Berger with Kronos Quartet and Rinde Eckert.
Tom Rychetsky is a Czech choreographer, dancer and a stage manager. He choreographed dance-theater piece “Clockwork Orange” for the South Bohemian Theater Ballet (with Ondřej Vinklát), nominated for the best dance work of 2021; “Branický zázrak”, authorial musical of the Academy Award winner Jan Sverak (with D. Musilova) and “iMucha”, an international multimedia show that premiered in May 2022 at O2 Universum Prague with subsequent tour to Expo 2020 in Dubai.
Past projects include movement direction for theater productions, such as Swing Heil! (Poton Theater), Cabaret Winton (Svandovo Theater), Barber Shop (Horacke Theater Jihlava), collaboration with the music band Tata Bojs and DEKKADANCERS on staging the “Big Bang” Concert, as well as creating multiple choreographies for professional dance companies (DEKKADANCERS, National Theater Prague, Prague Chamber Ballet, Cirk La Putyka, White Dove Theater, Bohemia Ballet).
Rychetsky is a recipient of a 2005 Critic’s Award for the best choreography and one of the founders of DEKKADANCERS (www.dekkadancers.net). As a dancer he was a member of the Prague National Ballet (2003-2014) and Prague Chamber Ballet (2000-2003).
John Mosloskie is an American songwriter and composer. He releases his own music under the name Gutter Sparrow, and as a touring musician has had the pleasure to play for artists like Jesse Marchant, Heather Woods Broderick, The Building, The Loom, Ben+Vesper and Aradhna. John began scoring music for dance in 2012 with interdisciplinary collective The Space We Make, and in his time residing in New York City developed scores for several independent choreographer/dancers there, cultivating a practice of implementing movement generated sound from rehearsals as a foundation for the score itself.
Aleš Kauer is an artist, poet, musician and a graphic designer. He is an organizer of cultural events, avant-garde music projects, and a literary-musical festival “Kvílení.” His poems, texts, and music reviews has been regularly published in print media (A2, Host, Tvar, Weles, Glosolalia, Prostor, Artikl and Deník Referendum) and a selection of his poems was printed by the Kniha Zlín publishing house in 2011.
Kauer’s work have been translated into English (Natálie Nera), Spanish (Emilio Paz), Polish (Jaroslaw Pastuszak), Ukrainian (Krystyna Kuznietsová), Slovenian (Taťjana Jamnik), Hungarian (Csehy Zoltán) and brought out in several foreign literary magazines and anthologies.
As a founder of the publishing house Adolescent, he produced many poetry collections, such as VNĚ/MNĚ (2014) and HappyEND (2020). On Bandcamp you can hear cycles of poems set to music “Heron” (Ivan Martin Jirous), ERTH (Olina Stehlíková), Imaginists (Sergej Jesenin), Understanding (Václav Havel), Good night, I announced the blow (Martin Jelínek).
BAC OPEN STORY
By Jacquelyn Claire
“I think they’re creepy,” said Vivienne Pankratova (aged 11), “I never played with Barbies – I had a baby doll called Sestra (sister in Russian) and a soft toy dog.” She’s standing in her David Bowie T-shirt, contemplating my question, “What do you think is the collective noun for Barbies?” She answered immediately, “an army of Barbie.”
Scattered around the Rudolf Nureyev Studio at Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) are around 50 naked, eBay-bought Barbies providing the trampoline for Czech choreographer Denisa Musilova’s exploration of the male gaze. She is in residence as a BAC Open resident artist, interrogating intergenerational wounding in POOL, investigating ways of looking, seeing and being seen—power shifts.
Mark DeChiazza joined the conversation: “I have two sisters and they had a lot of Barbies when I was growing up in the 70s …there was this kind of blind playing at sex you know… just like bump them on each other… and their legs bent the wrong way and so they’re sort of adult, but small, and there’s a bunch of things about them that are super weird. There was always a sadism to it because we would put them into these horrible positions, take their heads off and you know, chop their hair off…”
Vivienne: “I don’t like them – too ‘princessy.’”
Mark: “But usually we played dress up and made plays – my parents were both in the theater.”
Vivienne: “I can see you with lipstick.”
Mark: “Oh yes. Our house was completely gender fluid!”
Tomas Rychetsky quietly interjects: “It wasn’t possible to get Barbies during Communism. Not until we were about eleven when the revolution happened.”
“I really wanted them because they were very special… all the dolls that we had were like babies. But Barbies- they were little women, like adults right… which is more exciting than just playing mother. I loved the packaging. Barbie caused a friendship breaker in my house. A friend visited and broke off her hand. I was so upset—I never let her play at my house again,” said Denisa, lost in childhood stuff.
Denisa works in complete silence while creating the piece. She remains the voyeur to her own process—working from the inside and then stepping out.
“I think I’m schizophrenic in this piece,” said Denisa, “because as a choreographer I’m trying to be on the outside – notice if everything is going alright and also trying to be a dancer. It’s a really hard position because you’re always trying to control everything…like a mother over everybody—is it going okay? Is everybody doing what they need to do and it’s not falling apart.”
Denisa has recently become a mother, it shows in her work. A different pace, a grounded contemplation, a maternal meditation. She moves like she is duetting with herself, listening to her interiority, a sacred well. Allowing the creativity to lead, respecting the muse with closed eyes and willing body. In this post-partum pool, she begins a quiet conversation with her kneecap, with a pendulum swinging arm—seeking the edge of herself. There is a gallop, a run, a jump, a skip—she returns to the game playing motif from previous works like Tetris (2016) and Fitting Room (2018) but now we are in mother/daughter territory (or whatever you choose to project onto the work).
Vivienne, as the ‘daughter’, has a long, pink, princess train weighted down by beached Barbies—she is dragging her childhood around like a defiant afterbirth, chit chatting to them, shooting the breeze.
“Inside the piece, I think about the relationships I guess, the connections between us. I don’t think of it as a story, I think of what I’m doing—like what’s happening between me and Denisa and what’s happening between me and the others,” explained Vivienne.
The floor gets patterned
Daughter makes believe…
Mother intrudes with her domestic dance.
There is a grief line, a fault line.
Circle duet. Womb bound. Escape. Womb clamp. Hold, step in and out.
The ‘mother’ begins the ritual of discipline – a kind of “out damn spot” Shakespearian repetition.
Mom stays trapped, locked in, exhausted, busy – running on empty.
She moves to full body tremoring – shaking off excess adrenaline from the shock of attack, the near-death escape.
The discussion with body parts is as serious as quantum physics as Denisa navigates an angle, a sharp stamp, a rocking on hands and knees. Her right-hand talks across her back, broken doll lines, moving a leg to make space for a growing self. Ah—there is my ankle, ah—that is what this arm does.
“I want it to be mysterious enough, but open enough, but tight for people,” mused Denisa.
Tomas dances in her footsteps, just out of eye shot—looking for movement gifts to give her—an accent, a level shift, a clearer floor pattern. He offers. They improvise in their own spaces, looking, searching for the best way to have the conversation – the constant sound of bodies moving in silence. Soft landings.
Tomas: “We are both choreographers, but we are different in the way we choreograph, she gives me more things to think about—it opens possibilities.”
Tomas and Mark wield long magnetized poles that can hoist Barbies into the air like they’re pole dancing or angels levitating. Under their control Barbies become fuse balls, hockey pucks, billiard balls, chess pieces. Their phallic extensions transforming into tightrope walking guardrails, fishing poles, fighting sticks. They whistle, they smash, they preen. Men made boys by toys. A battlefield of fallen Barbies evidence of their ‘playtime.’
Mark: “My relationship to these Barbies? They are like effigies of people, we’re hardwired to relate to them, so I look them in the eyes, you know. I check on them in certain ways… there’s a way that a doll makes you act… like you’re semi-dealing with a person.”
The men ‘push up’ competitively, then are drawn to the women singing the Czech children’s rhyme, “When a horse falls in love.” They braid the child’s hair (“look at mine, so good!”), they hold and protect – the macho men from Denisa’s past pieces have morphed into ‘dad jeans and jokes’ guys.
“I wanted the men ‘macho,’ but it was hard to sustain the stereotype—it became homoerotic—branched off into another story entirely,” said Denisa.
The male wrestling has been transmuted into still, feminine focused service. There is waiting and patience – no desire to dictate the outcome. This is a new seam in her work. They are like carriage bearers, bodyguards, maybe court jesters – a fool. Male gaze has shifted from sexual objectification to contained, controlled, space framers. There is now a no ‘mans’ land. They clean up, put things in order, in lines, in trenches – a runway of Barbies. Watch for instructions. While mom and daughter do their call and answer, the men piss in corners, mark territory.
This piece sits in a liminal space, interstitial space, the in-between. Daydreaming next to a pool?
Denisa: “POOL – yes, just like when somebody throws you into something new – you just have to swim you know.”
Mark: “It’s like being in a water space with that kind of fluidity too. I think it gives an unpredictability – like something strange could happen at any moment…”
Denisa continued: “a little like a horror, something is going to happen, but you don’t know yet, something is not right, and you know that the rules aren’t the same rules that you know from life – they’re slightly different here…”
We’re wrapping up the session. Czech, Russian, South African, American are represented in the room – a chosen family fostered on artistry. Denisa has crisscrossed the globe, enduring over 10 visa application processes in her relentless pursuit of creative opportunities. Artistic wanderlust.
Vivienne opines: “I know someone who has never left Brooklyn, it’s kind of sad.”
“When I’m traveling, I can be the stranger… what I’m bringing is unique and interesting. Nobody’s watching me because it’s not home. It’s free for me, I’m free to be weird,” laughed Denisa as she packs up the Barbies– stacked in their eternal beach pose, leaning back on their elbows, subservient.
“What do you think people will get from this piece?” I asked.
“I am searching to explore womanhood and how we see the world,” continued Denisa.
“I feel it strongly through POOL because it’s this relationship of mother daughter and how they navigate the patriarchal world. I feel as a mother and as a middle-aged woman, I can talk from my perspective and from my experience and try to explain to younger generations not to make the same mistakes. It’s super important now to speak up and show that we are not alone -use the current momentum to talk about these things and change things.
“When will you know you have reached the full stop of the creation of the piece,” I probed.
“When you can all collectively breathe out,” said Denisa.
Jacquelyn Claire is a South African American theater maker living in New York City. She studied a Bilingual Performer’s Diploma at the University of Cape Town and studied opera under Wendy Fine and Sarita Stern. After 10 years as a professional performer working predominantly in physical theatre, devised productions and original musicals – she moved into directing, playwriting and theatre festival curation. Jacquelyn has worked closely with The Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, Rehearsal for Truth Festival and The Voices International Theater Festival in NYC.