IMPRESSIONS: Spring in Brief | Tushrik Fredericks, Coco Karol & Sxip Shirey, and Martita Abril
Coco Karol & Sxip Shirey's We Dona??t Need the Sea to Drown at National Sawdust
Creators: Coco Karol and Sxip Shirey
Archival Filmaker an&d Documentarian: Jacob McCoy
Performers: Sxip Shirey, Coco Karol, Jonny Rodgers, Rima Fand, Nick Demeris, Alaina Ferris, Catherine Brookman, Miguel GuzmA?n, Jalen Hicks, Raquel Klein, Nathan Repasz, Onome, and Lacy Rose
Date: June 7, 2025
Review by: Sarah Cecilia Bukowski for "Dance Enthusiast"
Community-engaged storytelling lies at the core of the creative partnership between dancer and choreographer Coco Karol and composer and sound artist Sxip Shirey, who arrange movement, sound, and words into embodied ethnographies derived from movement interviews that channel participantsa?? stories and emotions through their bodies. The performers a?? dancers Karol and Miguel GuzmA?n weave among Shirey and an ensemble of ten vocalists and musicians a?? act as channels for the stories of nineteen interviewees, passing words and gestures from body to body and voice to voice.
Across themes of ecological memory, migration, displacement, and grief, the artists activate chains of empathy and solidarity with an urgency that touches the soul in ways that the constant flow of news and social media are incapable of approaching. Each artista??s distinct voice rings clear and true as lyrics cascade through the chorus in rolling waves of accumulative harmonies imbued with a profound sense of recognition. Performers move about the space with the deep intimacy of trust: they slip small stools underneath a partnera??s feet to guide their winding steps, Karol and GuzmA?n entwine through a duet of quiet desperation with eyes closed, and each vocalist offers private encounters with the quietest of music against each of our ears.
Shireya??s composition makes use of traditional instruments such as piano, violin, and percussion as well as a variety of everyday objects that create unexpected music: wavering, ethereal harmonies from an array of tuned water glasses, pinging polyrhythms from irrigation bags that drip water onto overturned metal bowls, and assorted textures from marbles spun in glass bowls, a brooma??s bristles crunched by hand in time with footfalls, and the single virtuosic twirl of a cast iron weight plate. Karola??s tactile, organic choreography spools tension through intense internal focus and threads of interdependence; the care and intention offered in her winding duets with GuzmA?n run through gestures and interactions among chorus and musicians.
The transient beauty of life and the unknowable nature of death remain ever-present in songs and dances that flood and meander through the space, enveloping us in their sonic bubble and coalescing into formations of collective power. By amplifying individual stories through their art, Karol, Shirey, and their ensemble craft a moving tribute that continues to resound in my mind and heart.
