“A Folk dance for the 21st Century”
—Dance Enthusiast
PLASTIC HARVEST (2022)
Street Iteration: 5 Dancers, 22 minutes
Full Stage Version: 5 Dancers, 22 minutes
Touring Stage Version: 5 Dancers, 8 minutes
Delving into the issue of plastic pollution, this work has taken form in street performances, films, and staged productions. Radically transformed by costumes fashioned from hundreds of repurposed plastic bags the dancers appear as plastic monsters foraging and frolicking in their street habitat. The dance creates a surreal spectacle while provoking contemplation about the beauty of what—and who—our society throws away. Plastic Harvest has multigenerational appeal with children especially delighting in the performers’ uncanny sounds and visual transmogrifications. The street and staged versions share the same movement and similarly express the extreme excess of plastic proliferation, with the dancers spilling over conventional boundaries.
CHOREOGRAPHY: Jody Sperling
MUSIC: Matthew Burtner
COSTUMES: Lauren Gaston
LIGHTING: David Ferri
Related works: Plastic Harvest (Film), Single Use (Film)
STREET PERFORMANCE EXCERPTS
“A heap of plastic bags is a common sight on the streets of New York, where the trash overflows every weekend. But buried in these heaps last Saturday were human beings—dancing for their lives. Jody Sperling’s Plastic Harvest is a folk dance for the 21st Century, the city dump instead of the village green. . . . The dance dramatizes not just the ubiquity of plastic bags, but also our comfort with them. Seduced by the convenience of a throwaway culture, it’s hard to break our dependence on these weightless wonders. “—Tom Phillips, Dance Enthusiast
STAGE PERFORMANCE FULL WORK