At the WIP LA 014 showing on Monday, February 3, 2025 at G-Son Studios, a lively crowd came out to support two sets of artists presenting works in progress that expressed intimacy in vastly different ways. This monthly series, taking place on the first Monday of each month, provides artists with 10 hours of rehearsal space and the chance to share up to 25 minutes of work; ticket sales fund WIP while bar sales go to the artists.
After the lively crowd shuffled up the long flight of stairs to G-Son Studios from the bar area, we entered to chairs set up in curved lines around the stage space and a pile of pomegranates. A guitar lay on the floor, alluding to the imminent presence of Nick Duran and Jmy James Kidd’s musical collaborator, Tara Jane ONeil. Audience members sat in chairs, on the floor, and even stood along the walls to fit everyone in the space.
NICK + JAMES’ work, Pinnacle, was an introspective, calming work that highlighted the dancers’ history as collaborators. At the start of the piece, Duran and Kidd stood face to face, with the pomegranates between them, and stared into each other’s eyes. I was so drawn to their connection that I barely noticed that their arms had started to slowly move, lifting in unison to the side. This slow dance of mirrored arm movements continued and then progressed into making physical contact. Always connected through their eyes, Duran and Kidd contorted into various statuesque shapes featuring regal torsos and articulated wrist and fingers. They seemed to shape the negative space between and around them as they moved.
Jmy James Kidd – Photo by Devika Wickremesinghe.
Eventually, the dancers moved apart. While they did their own movements, they had a shared vocabulary that often involved leading with elbows and hips and had a continuous quality that matched the ambient music. Tara Jane O’Neil had an electric guitar, but the sounds were more meditative with calming ebbs and flows. As the dancers moved into faster unison work, they showed off lines and technique. They orbited the pomegranates, moving in and out with more vigor, eventually kicking and displacing some of the fruit. We learned later that the pomegranates came from an initial idea about eating fruit on stage and then stuck around as a way to mark the center they would keep coming back to.
From the expansive movement that they built to, things calmed down and Duran and Kidd came together in the center again to finish the piece, eyes closed this time and foreheads touching and they breathed heavily. In this low-tech showing, there was no blackout, so the dancers calmly bowed and started collecting their pomegranates as the crowd continued to applaud. At times, things felt slow, but I think this was the point, and at the end I was satisfied with the overall length of their offering. If the work is expanded upon, I would stick with the structure of a slower beginning but quicker resolution, since it kept the piece from dragging on too long. I enjoyed the movement of the pomegranates as the dancing picked up but perhaps I would have enjoyed some sort of collection of them as part of the work or more connection to them aside from the incidental scattering.
After a short intermission, where we left the space, the audience was invited back in and we entered to find a scene already in progress for Max Martin and Mandolin Burn’s presentation. Martin and Burns are lovers and in their work, they explore how that relationship impacts their collaboration as artists. They collaborated for their piece with Celeste Olivier, who provided live sound performance.
WIP LA 014 – Max Martin and Mandolin Burn’s “Lover’s Duet 2” – Musician Celeste Olivier – Photo by Noah Kentis.
The scene was a contrast to the calm of the first act. The dancers dressed in nude leotards and cut off nude tights with black thongs on top, and the chairs were now in a circle around the performance space. Martin was scootering in circles, while Burns was on the floor next to a bench surrounded by colorful wigs, writhing around with a cell phone and posing to take sexy nude photographs, while Olivier was energetically DJing behind a table. The dancers seemed unaware of each other as they did their tasks. Burns’ sensual posing on the floor contrasted the repetitive action of scootering.
Olivier amped up the music and started to run around the room to give high fives. This shifted the energy – the dancers abandoned their tasks and began to show off a variety of absurd tricks. One would balance and pose on the bench, while the other did lunges and various Horton-inspired flatbacks and tilts. The wigs were gathered and used to accentuate a port de bras, and then they became pom poms as one of the dancers became a cheerleader. Martin carried Burns on their shoulders to the gold basketball hoop against a wall in G-Son Studios, and Burns hung from the hoop and posed. It was ridiculous and amazing and entertaining at every movement.
Eventually, after a voice over prompting the dancers to begin the Pacer Test, to the audience’s laughter as they remembered this traumatic task from middle school PE classes, the dancers repeatedly ran into each other and transitioned into deeper connection. They breathed heavily as Burns climbed around Martin, hanging off them in strange shapes. The music went away and Olivier would casually stroke the guitar providing ambient strums and sounds that emphasized the awkwardness of the partnering. It seemed to be foreplay and the black thongs highlighted the sensuality of the poses.
The erotic, cheeky display included the dancers hopping towards each other inverted with one leg up to connect in a pose that not so subtly alluded to scissoring. The dancers were still as Olivier provided ecstatic riffing from the guitar. After the final climax, the dancers stood and looked into each other’s eyes, with gentle smiles and deep connection and intimacy.
WIP LA 014 – Max Martin and Mandolin Burn’s Lover’s Duet 2 – Photo by Noah Kentis.
From here, Martin and Burns’ rave inspiration came to life. The dancers started to do repetitive rave-dancing movements as Olivier became a DJ again. Olivier’s performance skills came to life as she began to run around the room with increasing manic energy shouting comical club promotions. She ran closer and closer to the dancers and they migrated together, with the three ending tightly clumped together. This piece was funny, outrageous, and dynamic, and I wish I could watch it again to notice other details and humorous moments. In the beginning of the piece, the dancers were separate and unaware of each other, and then later, they connected through touch, so it would have been interesting to see more of the courtship and building of connection before the first physical touch. I loved the gentle smiles and eye contact after the climax, but the transition into the rave ending from here could be developed further if the piece were expanded.
Both pieces explored intimacy in infinitely different ways, but both were equally interesting to observe. NICK + JAMES’ Pinnacle slowed down time and showed the artists living fully in a single moment, while Max Martin and Mandolin Burns’ Lover’s Duet 2 was a chaotic, fun montage that took us through a sexual encounter.
The overall event highlighted a strong community, out in full force on a Monday night. WIP 015 featuring Rosanna Tavarez and Dancing Through Prison Walls will take place on Monday, March 3rd, and it is certainly worth checking out if this evening was any indication.
To learn more about WIP LA, please visit their website.
Written by Rachel Turner for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: WIP LA 014 – Max Martin and Mandolin Burn’s Lover’s Duet 2 – Photo by Noah Kentis.
