These Hands I Thought Were Mine

Created and performed by Coco Karol, Michaela Davies, & Sxip Shirey

May 19, 2018 –– Glass Box Theater, The New School, NYC

As a part of Women Between Arts (WBA), New York’s leading interdisciplinary womxn and non-binary artists series, created and curated by multi- and interdisciplinary artist Luisa Muhr at The New School, College of Performing Arts.

"These Hands I Thought Were Mine" is a performance about disruption and empathy created and performed by Coco Karol, Michaela Davies, and Sxip Shirey. A dancer attached to EMS patches becomes a human marionette, whose dancing is aided or impeded by electrical shocks that force her body into involuntary movements. The impulse of the shocks are directed by a musician who plays the dancer’s movements by playing a MIDI controller programmed to send electric stimulation as musical pulses to targeted muscle groups. Breath is amplified throughout the performance. What ensues is a trio of human effort amidst an environment of mechanized choices.

“'These Hands I thought Were Mine' was absolutely mesmerizing to witness. The performance was haunting and beautiful, so much so that I wept through the whole thing. It reminded me a lot of physical decline, something I see a lot in my work as a nurse. There was a sense of loneliness that I felt in the room during the first part of the performance and it settled itself firmly in my chest. There was something about being in a crowd of people and just watching as someone loses control of her body that caused me to feel sadness and distress. I felt like I wanted to help, somehow. And of course I couldn’t do that so I wept instead, thinking about the people I’d seen whose bodies and minds slipped away from them. Yet I was surprised by how graceful and beautiful many of the movements were. And it was that show of grace in the middle of something uncontrollable that turned out to be heartening for me. So a knot loosened in my chest and I wept with relief...”

–– Leora Pedersen, audience member