The Gauntlet: 2016-2021

Since 2016 composer/ sound pioneer Sxip Shirey and choreographer/ researcher Coco Karol have been creating community-inclusive, immersive choral performances called "The Gauntlet." Audiences are led upstream through waves of sound and song, through corridors and labyrinths of singers who pass the libretto downstream in cascading tones and phrases. Each performance is specific to the community where it is performed.

The libretto for "The Gauntlet" is comprised of personal narratives and stories collected from local community where the performance takes place in a process called 'movement interviews' A movement interview is a methodology Karol developed that employs movement and dialog to interview individuals with the idea that our bodies are archives of memory and experience and that the conjunction of movement and dialog affords different types of access to memory and language.

This video by Jacob McCoy charts the progression of the work from 2016 to 2021:

The High Line, NYC (2016)
Fredrickstad, Norway with Norwegian Theater Academy (2017)
St. Pauls, Brooklyn (2017)
National Sawdust (2017)
Brooklyn Studios for Dance (2017)
Sydney Opera House (2017)
Cleveland Museum of Art (2018)
Rockefeller Center (2019)
The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi in SPAT 3D audio (2021)
The Fisher Center at Bard College (2021)