coring the apple
by Douglas Messerli
Matthew Richardson (creator and
choreographer), Damian Siqueiros (director) The Arrow / 2016 [4 minutes]
The project, created for and with circus
artist Matthew Richardson and performed with Francis Perreault, represents in
acrobatics on the Cyr wheel how the couple fell in love and what their
relationship has meant to them.
To
describe it certainly wouldn’t do the work justice and, furthermore, I do not
have a language to fully relay the events of its images.
One can say in general that it begins the couple approaching one
another, reaching out and enjoying one another encircled by the wheel, before
the other walks off. He comes back quickly, however, spinning with the other
and interlocking bodies.
Although at moments one leaves become coming back into the seemingly
magnetic pull of the twirling circle, most of the film reveals their utter
engagement.
In
the film’s last scenes, the two performers throw dry paint dust at one another,
coloring their bodies in hues of purple, blue, and yellow and the wheel itself,
picking up the colors creates its only images from its spinning motion.
Obviously, it signifies the opening up of their selves to the complete beauty
of the world, although personally I found these last images a little kitsch and
circus like, preferring the marvel of their nearly nude bodies to the
artificiality of the paint colors.
I’ve produced a series of smaller images in an attempt to represent the
beauty of their motions.
The
creators felt that their 2015 work became a homage to the LGBTQ community and,
in particularly, to the victims of the Orlando, Florida attack on June 12,
2016.
Los Angeles, October 31, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October
2023).
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