site specific installation by Heather Gordon with dancer/choreographer Justin Tornow. All media credit (photo and video) Michelle Lotker unless otherwise noted.

ECHO (2017) 
Heather Gordon, site-specific installation
Justin Tornow, choreography and performance
Premiere: February 23, 2017 at 7pm, 21c Hotel and Museum in Durham, NC

Press
“Echo Chamber” by Chris Vitiello. INDYweek Durham edition, Feb 22, 2017

ECHO is an interdisciplinary collaboration with Justin Tornow that explores junctions between site-specific installation, live performance, and pre-recorded video projection. Gordon’s installation is a full-scale data map that acts as a stage for a performative iteration of its concepts which include the dynamics of intimate relationships and the nature of reality. Gordon covers 21c’s Vault Gallery walls and floor in mirrored mylar tape to create an elaborate and reflective pattern calculated and designed using dates of correspondence between close friends.

The danced portion of ECHO is a solo choreographed and performed by Justin Tornow. The solo offers an assessment of self in process and presentation. Tornow’s works are frequently developed based on visual feedback from mirrors and/or digital devices— at times, this approach provides the relief of regeneration. At others, a sense of self-imposed surveillance. The solo suggests this: performance superimposed on process in an endless echo.

ECHO invites meditation on self-knowledge, origin, and authenticity.

Exterior projection on 21C Durham. Video by Alex Maness. Photo credit: Alex Maness

Exterior projection on 21C Durham. Video by Alex Maness. Photo credit: Alex Maness

Live dance performance viewable through a doorway. Photo credit: Alex Maness

Heather Gordon and Justin Tornow presenting their artist anti-talk. Photo credit: Alex Maness

Photo credit: Alex Maness

COMPANY history
Founded in 2013, COMPANY is a contemporary dance company based in Durham, NC. Under the artistic direction of Justin Tornow, COMPANY’s work experiments with (and within) formal structures to deliver physical works in startling contexts.  By utilizing both composition and improvisation, the choreography reconsiders canons about movement and content while keeping an eye on technicality and form; there is at once clarity, and experimentation with how clarity might come into being. The dances seek to reorganize notions, patterns, and structures with the entire production, presenting original new music, lighting, and visual design to create rich contexts for the dance. Collaboration is a key part of the work to date: in addition to the 7 performers, COMPANY partners with area musicians Matt McClure and Lee Weisert and visual artist Heather Gordon on full-length performance projects and installations.