A Vessel for Carriage by Matty Davis and Ben Gould takes place on the deck of a Chicago River Cruise boat at dusk. This new project bridging performance, dance, and installation is specifically designed for an intimate audience, and is tuned to the boat, the moving water, and the distinctive bridges spanning the river artery that passes through the city. The artists have created the work as a response to evolving senses of the body—injury, trauma, healing, and growth. Both physically and sonically charged, the work radically explores control and response between the two performers, motored in part by the raw energy of Gould’s Tourette Syndrome. Both audience and performers are awakened to real experiences of risk and trust in a setting that melds the built environment and the flow of the river over time.

This performance will take place rain or shine and lasts approximately one hour. Boarding begins at 7:00 pm, and the vessel departs at 7:15 pm from Chicago’s Riverwalk at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive (southeast corner of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, lower level). The vessel will then dock for de-boarding between at 9pm. Please dress appropriately. A reception upon the boat with light food and cash bar will follow. Please be aware that this room for only 70 guests.

For tickets ($20): https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3425752

Curated and Produced by Peter Taub
Clothing by Gabriella Lacza

More information about Carriage:

“One of the most profound experiences in contemporary performance. Frustration, desolation, sadness and love are embodied in a wide-ranging programmatic structure both rawly virtuosic and tastefully sparse. Truly stunning physicalities, reminiscent of the sculpture of Henry Moore and Anthony Caro, create moments of austere isolation that are subsumed into a vital emotional unity.”
Clifford Allen, Director of Archives, Watermill Center, NYC

Carriage is a site-responsive performance created by Matty Davis and Ben Gould that radically explores control and empathy, motored in part by the raw energy of Gould’s Tourette Syndrome. This performance is informed by evolving senses of the body injury, trauma, healing, and growth and offers a unique opportunity to create a work that draws from the variance of Davis and Goulds distinct physicalities. The result is an intense, viscerally and sonically charged experience, where empathy is a physical tool, resistance offers stability, and we are all cast out into a space that levels us, brings us real fear, awakening, new vocabularies and physical structures.

Carriage has been workshopped in New York City at Judson Church, the Watermill Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Philadelphia School, and Queenslab. It was supported through a residency at the Kickstarter Headquarters in NYC, and has received support from a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Official Website

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Tags: A Vessel For Carriage, ben gould, Chicago, Chicago River, Gabriella Lacza, Matty Davis, Near North Side, Peter Taub