Cory Nakasue and Elisabeth Motley in Conversation for Critical Correspondence
December, 2021
A collaboration relies on a trusted exchange, where the search, the detour, and the acquiesce towards each other, is shared even when the goal is unnamed. Locating this point of meeting, an intersection that is in a constant state of redefinition, is tricky but it’s also where things get really interesting. Movement Research AIR, Elisabeth Motley, and dramaturg, Cory Nakasue have been working together since 2017, finding their way “to understand, through choreographic practices, how crip/disabled representations undermine legibility and instead celebrate illegibility, excess, and non-absorption.” Here, they reflect on their process in the past, and instead consider a future that favors an expanding and diversifying lens for their work and beyond.
-- Leslie Cuyjet, Critical Correspondence co-editor
Image from O+ Festival, Lindsey Welkowicz
A large wooden sculpture made up of smaller wooden triangles is illuminated by a yellow/green light, the rest is in deep shadow of the night. The light strikes the sculptural object and then opens its mouth onto the form of Elisabeth, a white woman with brown hair, who kneels and twists herself in spasmodic mania.