Highways Performance Space

August 16 & 17, 2024
8:30PM

1651 18th St,
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Closer To… HYSTERIA

This double-header opens with the debut of Indigo Dance Co. and their work “Closer To…”, which challenges our notions of escapism as a form of running from, and continues with “HYSTERIA”, Leah Zeiger’s newest work exposing the maddening, crazy-making experience of being in an abusive relationship.

“Closer To…“, directed by Dani Burd, marks the debut of Burd’s Indigo Dance Company. The multimedia performance, choreographed by Burd in collaboration with her company members, will follow individual movers’ as they traverse their experiences, battles, breakdowns with, and ultimate surrender to, escapism. Regardless of our chosen form of escapism, our society views these attempts as feeble endeavors to run farther from life. But escapism is simply a byproduct of being human, something universally experienced and hardly shameful. It is in the loneliness surrounding escapism that our sadness, rage, fears, and nightmares come to life. Connection is the antidote. Our quest is not to be farther from, but rather, closer to our life source: our Universe, our soul, our Earth, our connection to one another.

“HYSTERIA” will explore both women’s relationship to anger and the fear that much of the world (women included) hold towards women’s bodies. Largely informed by Zeiger’s experiences from an abusive relationship, “HYSTERIA” looks squarely at the way women are so often disenfranchised and stripped of their agency and autonomy both in personal relationships and in the world at large. A woman’s body has become (or, perhaps, always has been) politicized, commodified, and vilified — a phenomenon which causes such a rift between our relationships to each other and to our own bodies that we are left with no choice but fear or be feared, express or be engulfed by our righteous rage. Set to Max Berlin’s powerful score, “HYSTERIA” will challenge what you believe about how your body craves an expression of rage.

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