HORSES&FOXES

HORSES & FOXES is a 40-minute durational immersive performance exploring matriarchal power, and agency performed live by three artists, three women.

Built on the histories and mythologies of its namesake, HORSES & FOXES will take over Studio A at Pittsburgh’s WQED (The Fred Rogers Studio). This black box television studio space is a 78’x76’x30’ raw space with a lighting rig, projection capabilities, multi-channel speaker setup, and cyclorama backdrop. HORSES & FOXES breaks the traditional proscenium setting by positioning the audience in the round, using the freestyle dance style of cypher1 as the stage where the audience and performers meet and engage.

The horse (Equus caballus) is a one-toed, hoofed mammal – often in herds with a clear hierarchical structure, born with wild strength and elegance, is seen as a display of natural power, pride, freedom, and agility. In the human world, they are often domesticated and led by a dominant individual, one in command. Foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are wild, rarely domesticated mammals with long snouts and a distinct, full-bodied, voluptuous fluffy tail. They have excellent hearing and can detect the low-frequency sounds of their prey. Using these animals as inspirations, HORSES & FOXES aims to explore the metaphor and mythologies surrounding these creatures, particularly how patriarchal societies have historically associated women with these animals as symbols of fertility and guardianship, as well as of impulsiveness, seductiveness, and cunningness.

In this project, we ask:
When power is given, how to wield it;
When power is exercised, what comes from it;
When power is feminine, who provokes it;
When power is a threshold, where does it break and
How does one heal
To be re-empowered

In unpacking these inquiries, we look to writers Clarissa Pinkola Estés “Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype,” Maggie Nelson’s “On Freedom: Four Sounds of Care and Constraint” and “Like Love,” and bell hooks’ “All About Love: New Visions” and “Communion: The Female Search for Love” to untangle the multifaceted, often imposed, roles women bear under societal expectations. Our wielding and surrendering of power in service of others “for love,” and what it means to be authentic in possessing and harnessing the power of our female bodies and beings for ourselves. We also look to the Ephesian Artemis, the “great mother goddess.” Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and birthing is associated with animals, the forest, and has the power to talk to and control them. She is also the vengeful protector of wronged women, serving justice with an arrow.

Technically, we want to expand the fusion of disciplines into an orchestration of experiences. Combining choreographed bodies, static and wearable sculptures made of unusual organic materials, and live capture and processing of sound elements, we want to use embodied movements and gestures as a starting point to activate the impositions provided by the wearables. In the choreographic exploration, we want to see how the body interacts and negotiates with the restrictions to find a new language to express itself fully. For the sculptures we want to investigate how to meld disparate physical materials into body-fitting devices that are robust while malleable – representing what we believe women kind to be. On the sonic level, we want to use live-generated sounds from the performances as a mechanism to conjure the forming and breaking of memory as it shapes us into who we are vs who we have the capacity to become.

Through performance and the body, a metaphor for the larger sociopolitical body, we hope the audience recognizes themselves.

This project was made possible with support from the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Grant #2025-020. Additional images available here.