Fold Me

by Alice Klock

set by K Story

costumes by Jenni Ladd

sound by Alice Klock

photography by Todd Rosenberg

produced by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at The Harris (Chicago, IL) in 2018

Fold Me, choreographed by Alice Klock and performed by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, is about the idea of parallel lives and that different versions of ourselves might be refracted or folded over time, dimensions, and space. Alice asked the dancers to consider what would happen if we could fold the fabric of time, much like the way you would fold a shirt, and in these folds lived multiple versions of ourselves. Would all of the lives of the different versions of us lie so that they lined up or intersected? Would one self be able to see another? Would they be blind to each other? Would they assist one another? Could there be a community amongst versions of self? Amongst these versions of ourselves, we imagined there would be a community and that one version of self could assist another. And so the adventure began.

These questions we continued to ask ourselves as the design and rehearsal processes began. As the dancers began creating characters, different worlds were formed and the work quickly evolved to have a lot of vitality with movements that were bold, strong, and sometimes a little crazy.

Alice’s idea of folding time immediately made me think of the Rorschach inkblot tests and how each person’s perceptions differ when looking at them. These strong and bold blots led me to the idea of source and shadow and how shadows and lighting can change the perception of what you are seeing. Strong and bold single source lights became the base of my design and the idea of how that angle of light could affect the shadows within the space. Alice’s work became folded fragments in time, composed of different sections that were completely different from the section before but all a part of the same universe.

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