I Wish You’d Keep Still
by Carson Efird
DANCE THEATER
This all-new pair of dances, inspired by two Tennessee Williams one-acts, blends movement and text to bring his stories to life in thrilling new shapes and sounds.
choreography by Carson Efird
music by Joe Westerlund
based on "Why Do You Smoke So Much, Lily?" and "Something Unspoken" by Tennessee Williams
EFIRD WESTERLUND
Los Angeles, CA
"You say there's something unspoken. Maybe there is. I don't know. But I do know some things are better left unspoken."
— Grace, from the play Something Unspoken
About The Show
The Festival welcomes back accomplished choreographer and performer Carson Efird.
I Wish You'd Keep Still is a pair of dances, each a duet for two women, that addresses the female relationships in Tennessee Williams' one-acts Why Do You Smoke So Much, Lily? and Something Unspoken.
In both plays, female desire is silenced through sound: a nagging mother, music records, societal chatter, and a telephone ringing. But movement breaks through these barriers, inviting the unfulfilled desires of the body to be heard through stark contrasts between stillness and movement, proximity and distance, silence and sound.
The piece is choreographed by Efird, Katherine Ferrier, and Courtney Greer, and features original sound scores by Joe Westerlund.
About The Creative Team
Carson Efird (Performer and Choreographer) is a dancing yogini from South Carolina. She recently received her MFA from UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance where she developed a movement process that extracts and abstracts action from theatrical texts into non-verbal narratives. Her delightful dance The Road to Paradise, based on Williams' Provincetown letters, poems, and diaries, was the first performance in the Festival's first season in 2005. Since graduating from Bennington College her work has been presented by North Carolina Dance Festival, NC (2013), Meredith College, NC (2009), Goose Route Dance Festival, WV (2008), Bickett Gallery, NC (2007), Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, MA (2006-07), DUMBO Dance Festival, NY (2005), and Danspace Project's After School Series, NY (2005). She has danced with Even Exchange Dance Theatre and Immediate Theatre, both in North Carolina, and with Emergent Improvisation Project in Vermont.
Joe Westerlund (Composer) is a percussionist, composer, improviser and vocalist who records and tours internationally with Megafaun, Califone and Gayngs, among others. He has collaborated with a wide array of artists including minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt, On Fillmore (feat. Wilco's Glenn Kotche) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver). His work can be heard on the record labels Table of the Elements, Northern Spy, Dead Oceans, Hometapes and Jagjaguwar. Westerlund is a co-founder of Sounds of the South, a project that reinterprets selections from the Alan Lomax box set of the same name. Westerlund holds a BA in Music from Bennington College. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2010 he has composed music for film and modern dance, and most recently recorded under the moniker Grandma Sparrow for Spacebomb Records.