Pearls

Political Theorist Hannah Arendt suggests the ability to keep oneself company, to think to oneself, and to live with oneself is an ethical task. The solo dancer has nothing but her own body and nothing to interpret but herself.

In PEARLS, Alisha McLennan Marler is actively pursuing this ethical task in an abstracted exploration of her lived experience where her identity is fragmented by societal constructs and assumptions. What if her way of moving and speaking can be understood and reclaimed as a poetic, self-reflexive series of complex layers in which she can be violent, rebellious, quiet, and charming all at once?

Working with choreographer Julia Harvie, Composer Andrew McMillan and lighting designers Brad Gledhill and Rachel Marlow, Alisha builds an intimate, fragmented, multifaceted space that refracts and reflects her lived experience as she attends to the ethical task of thinking and living with oneself and asks the audience if they can do the same.