Mechanics' Hall

Mechanics’ Hall will present three performances of The Head is not the Star of the Body in our third-floor ballroom. In place of a traditional talkback or panel, audiences will be invited to reflect through writing and collage. A zine-making workshop will offer space to process the work through language and visual form.

Directed and choreographed by Cassie Wang, the evening-length dance production responds to a selection of songs by American indie folk band Big Thief. With the sound and lyricism of the music serving as inspiration for ethnographic inquiry and movement generation, six performers traverse through states of holding, witnessing, singing, chasing, and coalescing in embodiments of varying relationality. Wang and her collaborators ask: How does longing reveal identity? How do we sit with someone else’s longing? How do we measure the distance between subjects of longing? In process and in performance, this new work aims to cultivate mutual understanding of self and other.