Touch Update
2018
by Bill Shannon
role: consulting producer
“Shannon is a performance artist and provocateur who has earned international fame while refusing to slip compliantly into preconceived narratives set aside for disabled dancers.” —KQED
Known for creating groundbreaking choreographies that explore the social constructions that surround disabled bodies, Bill Shannon’s Touch Update combines movement, wearable projection technology and video installation to explore the significant and often subtle implications of physical human contact in the digital era. Touch Update “reverse engineers” Shannon’s virtuosic technique for dancing on crutches, as he dissects and dismantles the multiple online identities we create in order to mask and manipulate our lived experience.
PRACTICE
PROCESS
While serving as Interim Deputy Director of Kelly at Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and continuing after, I collaborated with the artist to identify the project’s commissioning consortium, secure grants and residencies, usher the project to premiere.
Touch Update is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Painted Bride, Dance Place and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information: www.npnweb.org.
The creation of Touch Update was made possible in part with support Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Heinze Endowments, and New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
PERFORMANCE
May 11–12, 2018 • Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA
November 14–17, 2018 • New York Live Arts, New York, NY
October 19–20, 2018 • Painted Bride, Philadelphia, PA