Finding Home:  Praying to Cars

Director / Choreographer:  Rebekah Lane

Dancer: Rokaya Mikhailenco

Venue: Creative City Project, 2016

Finding Home was a compolation of three short performance pieces developed independently.  They were tied together by the presence and invisible pull of a tiny blue birdhouse.  Praying to Cars in this performance is a second evolution of my exploration of our devotion to cars in the Unites States.  It responds to my own search for rest as I navigate work and health.  It explores the relationship to the constant hum of mechanical noise and our search for peace, redemption, and focus.

In the original performance, Prayer Poses to Cars, I selected poses shown through images of prayer collected through research at Indiana University: South Bend (http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v30n2/prayer.shtml).  You can read about the first phase on it's page. 

In this second evolution, Praying to Cars, we began from the original page of prayer poses, but Rokaya brought in some of her personal Muslim prayer heritage and movement.  The shift in vehicle sounds triggers Rokaya to throw herself into a new pose - sometimes into seeking a new position for connection, and sometimes struggling to maintain or return to a previous pose.  This is a more organic and personal inquiry into this topic than the initilal "Prayer Poses to Cars."