Will Rawls: [siccer] @ On the Boards (Seattle – Lower Queen Anne)

Through a dance performance and accompanying video installation, Will Rawls invites us to consider the ways in which Black bodies are relentlessly documented, distorted, and circulated in the media.

In [siccer], Will Rawls experiments with stop-motion, a filmmaking technique in which still photographs are strung together to produce a moving image. Through a dance performance and accompanying video installation, Will Rawls invites us to consider the ways in which Black bodies are relentlessly documented, distorted, and circulated in the media. Throughout [siccer]’s live performance, five dancers are suspended in an uncanny reenactment of an iconic American film. When the camera’s shutter closes momentarily between photographs, a gap in surveillance occurs that allows Rawls and collaborators to play within these intervals.

The project’s title is driven by the usage of “[sic],” a Latin adverb which indicates incorrect spelling within a quotation. [sic] is often employed to contrast Black vernacular with standard English. Upturning this perceived conflict, [siccer] illuminates the verbal, physical play that marks how Black performance actively eludes capture and speculates on the potential for collective strategies of narrating the world, uncorrected.

Tickets ($33) here.