Body as Instrument, Instrument as Body

Brandon Sward, butt fused to seat, watches magnetic performers whisper sweat nothings at the sweltering L.A. Dance Project studios.

By Brandon SwardDecember 1, 2024

IMMDED IMMGEWD, L.A. Dance Project, Los Angeles, September 5–7 and November 22–23, 2024.

I’m attending an experimental dance performance in Downtown Los Angeles on the hottest day of the year. I was comfortable in the air-conditioned warehouse of my day job, but by the time I arrive at the L.A. Dance Project studios, my undershirt has fused to my spine. Chairs line both sides of the gray Mylar floor. The lights go down to signal the beginning and come up just in time to catch a thin, bearded man wearing all black sitting down in one of the vacant chairs. Oh, this is going to be one of those shows, I think, as I settle into the wise complacence of a seasoned audience member.

For the next hour, though, IMMDED IMMGEWD surprises me at almost every turn. The bearded sitter is multi-instrumentalist Elliott “L” Sellers, though it might be more appropriate to describe him as a percussionist: in his hands, every instrument presents another invitation to strike, scrape, rub, or beat. Sellers is joined onstage almost immediately by long and elegant choreographer Jobel Medina, whose supple and feline movement contrasts Sellers’s aggressive air drumming. Soon, the pantomime play of Sellers becomes a sound explosion. The relationship feels like one of contagion, phrases passing between the two like excited whispers.

The relationship between Medina and Sellers, however, is also one of tension, even anger. During a segment somewhere between a joke and a fight, Medina pulls away the components of Sellers’s drum kit one by one, as though tired of listening or maybe wanting to remove the barrier between them. At the end of this process, Medina is left holding a single drum over his head as Sellers attacks it with his mallets and seems to push Medina back with their sheer force. As the assault continues, Sellers drives Medina backward through an emergency exit into the too-warm evening air. Several viewers chuckle at the stunt, and I strain to hear the two through the walls as they circle the building and return through the main entrance.

These moments feel almost kitschy, but the chemistry of Medina and Sellers is so electric that I barely notice. As they soldier on (I use this verb because at this point, the two are pouring sweat), Medina and Sellers become ever more intimate, even though the instruments continue to come between them. But instead of barriers, these objects increasingly become bridges. When Sellers introduces a cello midway through, it soon transforms into yet another way for the performers to relate to one another, as if pulled by stubborn magnets. Toward the end of the piece, Sellers holds the body of the cello and Medina the bow, both performers coaxing notes out of it by gently leaning into and away from one another, an updated echo of Rest Energy (1980), as urgent and tender as Abramović and Ulay ever were.

¤

Photo by contributor.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.