RED HORSE is an experimental theatrical production, conceived of on two planes, like the open pages of a comic book. Action takes place on the stage & on the projection screen hung at the back of the stage with an overhead camera capturing the movements of the actors. The entire stage floor is covered with a large-scale sand painting of the Red Horse that shifts and changes with each performer’s movements. Throughout the performance, artist Jenny Rogers continues to paint with sand around and through the actors, creating the horse’s surroundings- the fence, the gorge, the field & the Gobi Desert. Performers lie together upon the stage floor creating slow motion shapes like the stop action frames of a horse galloping, linked together in jerky rhythms in an early Muybridge animal locomotion experiment. Because of the video projection of the play space, the audience is able to view the performance simultaneous from two angles.
The play metaphorically depicts, through the life of a horse, the artists’ struggle to make a piece of collaborative work. He is our anthropomorphized, animal other, & in the end, it all just falls apart. Inspired by the snake rituals, Sarpam Thullal (Kali of the Snakes), she witnessed in Kerala, South India, director / choreographer Clove Galilee conceptualized this creative process as a spiritual ritual. In the Kali ritual, Kali is depicted in a large floor painting made of spices. The performer dances on the painting, destroying it as she is spiritually possessed by the deity. At the end of the ritual, the spices are swept away. In RED HORSE, the actors performing on a large-scale sand painting, become possessed by the creative spirit embodied by the red horse and destroy the painting. In the end, the stage is swept clean like a blank slate. The creative force enters the body in the same way the spirit of a deity enters a human form (or “horse” as spiritual mediums are called in Afro-Cuban & Afro-Haitian religious traditions).
As defined by Maya Deren, “a ritual is an action distinguished from all others in that it seeks the realization of its purpose through the exercise of form.”* My sand paintings also seek to articulate their metaphors through the method of their creation. I am interested in the intersection between art making and the performance of community, specifically found in ceremonial sand paintings and veves, or chalk drawings, coming out of the African Diaspora. Mark making in the earth has been a sacred art form in numerous cultures where it is used ritualistically to sanctify space with everyday materials such as sand, spice, chalk and blood. Today, sand paintings continue to be used by people as diverse as East Indians, Afro-Cubans, Haitians, Brazilians, Native Americans, specifically the Navajos, Australian Aborigines, Tibetan Monks and on some Christian holy days by Latin Americans. For more on the history of sand painting as an ancient artistic practice follow the link above.
The design & dimensions of the sand painting for RED HORSE differed according to each tour venue, ranging in size from 10 x 15 feet to 25 x 40 feet . The opening sand painting took Ms. Rogers 10 hours each day to create & was destroyed in the first 5 minutes of the play. The piece was originally developed in residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz, later traveling to New York City and Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
RED HORSE is a reconstruction of The Red Horse Animation, Mabou Mines' first theatrical piece, created in 1970. The version described here was resurrected 25 years later as a postmodern dance piece by the 2nd generation of Mabou artists, Clove Galilee (daughter of artistic founders Ruth Maleczech & Lee Breuer) & David Neumann (son of company members Fred Neumann & Honora Fergusson), both of whom performed in the piece. Directed & choreographed by Ms. Galilee with set design and sand painting by Jenny Rogers. Original theatrical text written by avant garde director / poet Lee Breuer.
Mabou Mines is one of the oldest experimental theater companies in the U.S.
*Maya Deren, “Ritual in Transfigured Time,” Experimental Films, New York: Mystic Fire
