Light on their Feet

It was sensory overload at the Marciano Art Foundation last weekend when six members of LA Dance Project performed side-by-side, around, and, at times, seemingly in tandem, with Doug Aitken’s film, Lightscape. Indeed, this 65-minute, site-specific, immersive performance, with choreography by LADP’s Daphne Fernberger, unfolded as Aitken’s seven screens told hallucinatory tales of the modern world, at the same time acknowledging a future floating somewhere out on the horizon.

Performance

LA Dance Project: “Lightscape,” in collaboration with Doug Aitken at the Marciano Art Foundation. Choreography by Daphne Fernberger

Place

Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California, April 12, 2025

Words

Victoria Looseleaf

Doug Aitken, Lightscape, 2024; Live Activation: Los Angeles Dance Project at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; © Doug Aitken, Courtesy of the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Photograph by Ari Adams

The dancers, of course, were more than up to the task and, in fact, created their own irresistible vocabulary that meshed with the dazzlingly visual and sonic environment that Aitken had created. Aitken’s film had had its world premiere—but on one screen only—at Walt Disney Concert Hall last November, and, with music at the heart of Lightscape, the alluring soundtrack wove together original compositions created by Aitken with a host of players.

Included were Los Angeles Master Chorale music director, Grant Gershon, the glorious singers of that Chorale, and orchestral pieces performed by the stellar Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of music and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel (he recently performed at Coachella, the first classical music conductor and orchestra to do so). In addition, there were notable compositions by iconic minimalists including Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Meredith Monk.

And if that weren’t enough, the main soundtrack was also augmented with ambient soundscapes composed for the film by Aitken, Beck, and others!

Obviously, Lightscape, which portrays a panorama of the American West, and asks the eternal questions, “Where are we now?” and “Where are we going?” is a huge deal. But so is LADP, even if there were but six dancers performing that afternoon. With the audience mostly seated on the floor and confined within a large circle, the dancers entered running—and kept running around the track-like markings that separated the watchers from the doers—until they made their way through the crowd and onto a hollowed-out platform that served as a miniscule stage. Reminiscent of Savion Glover’s bespoke portable tap dance floor, it was designed by Doug Aitken Workshop.

Doug Aitken, Lightscape, 2024; Live Activation: Los Angeles Dance Project at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; © Doug Aitken, Courtesy of the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Photograph by Ari Adams

Meanwhile, life, in its various iterations, unspooled across the screens in the forms of humans—a cowboy, a film/television star, Natasha Lyonne, and other characters who repeat lines such as, “you can lose yourself in an instant”—animals, including P-22, the beloved mountain lion that used to prowl the Hollywood Hills until he was euthanized in 2022, since becoming a martyred star who was actually given his own memorial concert—and folks going about their business. If their business, that is, were in the Mohave desert, a robotics factory (evoking Charlie Chaplin’s classic, “Modern Times”), on L.A.’s ubiquitous freeways or lolling about a Hockney-esque swimming pool.

So, how to compete with all of that? It was simple, really, as the dancers, garbed in funereal black t-shirts, cargo pants and sneakers (uncredited), whether deploying sinuous solos, as pairs moving in unison, or holding a pose in stasis—hello Courtney Conovan and Fernberger, resembling nothing less than a Greek frieze—these artists gave, perhaps, even more meaning to the film that is already a deep dive into existentialism.

With Jeremy Coachman initially activating the space by nonchalantly riding a bicycle around the make-shift track, the images behind him continued unreeling. And against the tableaux of donuts cooking in hot oil before being topped off with colorful sprinkles, a burial ground of eroding 747 planes, the roiling waves of the Pacific, or horses’ hooves trodding through sand, the sextet of movers broke apart, came together and reconfigured their bodies like pop-up figures standing sentry while the world around them was/is in a state of crisis.

Choppers loomed, recalling the horrendous fires that swept through Los Angeles in January of this year, while dancers Lorrin Brubaker (it was great to see him recovered from an injury), and Fernberger created a visceral kind of push-pull portrait of unyielding strength. And strength is what these performers personified, clinging to each other as if to life itself, the surrealism of the film was juxtaposed with the very true bodies traversing the space in real time.

Elements of contact improvisation also yielded fascinating moments: Occasionally in synch with the film, but more often than not, a study of motion in and of itself, the dancers, including Hope Spears and Audrey Sides, offered a playful push-pull vocabulary, with nobody actually dominating the scenario.

Doug Aitken, Lightscape, 2024; Live Activation: Los Angeles Dance Project at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; © Doug Aitken, Courtesy of the artist; 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Photograph by Ari Adams

Chu-hsuan Chang’s lighting for this particular event was also key, as various colors of the spectrum—neon reds, blues and greens—accentuated and, in some cases outlined the dancers, skewing this scribe’s perspective, ultimately making her torn as to where to look: at the film or at what Einstein called dancers, the “athletes of God.” For this viewer, though, who’d been at the Disney Hall performance, it was yet another way to be cocooned in art, with the performers, in this case, ruling.

And seeing that four of the dancers were also in the film, bobbing through the celluloid universe—an inscrutable narrative characterized by ebbs and flows—somehow seemed to enhance their real-life presence, as, er, krumpers. Both on film and in reality, the krump component—dancers’ free, robustly exaggerated moves—did, in fact, work, generating ever-changing worlds, replete with squeaking sneakers.

As Aitken’s cast dealt with life’s haunting vicissitudes, the LADP dancers created, in counterpoint, their own “Bodyscape.” Fashioning shadows with arms splayed, or occasionally Sufi-like, spinning as if trance-dancing, and, by dint of Chang’s sublime lighting schemes, these terpsichores brought to mind the late Loïe Fuller, groundbreaking artist, dancer and theatrical maverick whose work with electricity and light were precursors to the illumination effects found in today’s rock and pop extravaganzas.

An extravaganza in its own right, this Aitken/LADP partnership served as its own truth: thought-provoking, unpredictable, and awash in imagery—cinematic and corporeal—this performance may have been fleeting, but its imprint will, no doubt, be long-lasting. In other words: All hail to the art of collaboration, and the resultant platform that managed to integrate dance, landscape, ecology, architecture and other mediums, creating, in the process, an indelible work befitting these times.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

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