Weaving together projected video, music, and movement, Elizabeth Weinstein and Valerie Perczek have created a world of abstraction and symbol rising from the myth The Red Thread, or Le Fil Rouge. The story tells that the gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles or little finger of those that are destined for one another, either as lovers or to help each other in a certain way. The magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never breaks, and from this tension, Valerie and Elizabeth excavate the pieces that weave, ensnare, and illuminate the threads of life between them. Spilling from ladders, wombs, and oceans of fabric, they tread through layers of shadow, sound, and dance. Moving projections are a documentation of illusion and memory, casting a line to guide in the formation of the work. Singing voices invoke a universal language, a fashion show mocks the temporality of identity, a mouth full of marbles, bespoke skirts the length of a river, a love letter to the transfigurations of the self.
Artist Bios
Valerie Perczek is a Hispanic American multimedia artist that works in video, music, and dance. She trained in movement based expressive arts therapy at the Tamalpa Institute where she began basing her work in the process of intuitive discovery and healing. In her video work she aims to capture how it is that we as humans can tell the stories of our bodies. She cofounded a music based feminist collective called Flor Veinte Collective and performs under the name Indira Valey. She recently moved to Philadelphia to continue collaborating with artists of various forms.
Elizabeth Weinstein is a dancer and performance artist based in Philadelphia. Her work often takes up questions of ritual and healing in women’s bodies. Through self-portraiture and a curiosity for unspoken family histories, Elizabeth uses processes of embodied remembrance to create space for unspoken lineages. Her work, often based in improvisation, extends from what arises naturally from the body. Her pieces are jagged meditations that she performs with the desire to heal. As a trained doula, Elizabeth is interested in the intersections of movement, physical and emotional wellbeing, and social justice. She studied at the Headlong Performance Institute and has performed locally and internationally with White Box Theater, Scrap Performance Group, Group Motion Company, Martha Graham Cracker and Polyglot, among others.
