Goat Island (USA)  |  It's An Earthquake In My Heart 

 

 

Original writing is combined with words from the television show My Mother the Car and the Spanish ventriloquist Seņor Wences: a man shouts driving commands; an elderly dancer recalls his turbulent youth on a farm; a father tries to convince his son that his dead mother talks to him through a car radio; a man (portrayed by a woman) delivers a radio eulogy for his brother; two people tell a story of a phantom child who never existed; 'Don't be afraid'. The piece derives its structure from the three-part time displacements of Swann's Way (in search of Lost Time, Part 1) by Marcel Proust and Vicente Minnelli's 1954 film The Long, Long Trailer.

It's An Earthquake In My Heart is a commission of Wiener Festwochen (Vienna Festival), Arnolfini Live (Bristol), Kampnagel (Hamburg) and Podewil (Berlin). Goat Island's work is partly supported by Performing Arts Chicago, the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and by a City Arts Program 1 grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Chicago-based collaborative performance group Goat Island are in residency for three weeks at new territories. During the residency, they perform the Scottish premiere of It's An Earthquake In My Heart and a work-in-progress presentation of a new piece. The company are also working with artists and students as part of the Winter School. 

Goat Island's Matthew Goulish with Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) also present an Institute of Failure event during the National Review of Live Art at new territories.  Goat Island regard residencies as the most significant contribution to the process of making new work. They started developing an eighth major performance during the summer of 2002, the beginning of a two-year process that is approximately half way through at the stage they arrive in Glasgow. It is planned to present this new work at a later date.

Goat Island is: Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson (director), Mark Jeffrey, CJ Mitchell (manager), Bryan Saner and Lito Walkey. Members contribute to the conception, research, writing, choreography, documentation and educational demands of the work. Founded in 1987, Goat Island has made seven major performance pieces and toured throughout North America and Europe.

New Performance - work-in-progress presentation
The company began their research with the question 'How do you repair?' Drawing on diverse sources for dance / movement sequences, theatrical scenes and spoken texts, the company have begun mining The Wind (a silent film from 1928), the history of the teaching of the alphabet in America, the time / space patterns of the Fibonacci sequence spiral, the poetry of Paul Celan ,and household repair manuals and diagrams. The finished piece will question our place in a damaged world and our aptitude at repairing it. This new performance is a co-commission of Performing Arts Chicago, Arnolfini (Bristol, England), Dance 4 (Nottingham, England) and New Moves International for new territories (Glasgow, Scotland).