Elena Rose Light

Elena Rose Light, photo by Scott Shaw

Life in the Woods (working title) is a movement-based ventriloquism performance choreographed and enacted by Elena Rose Light. Faux-taxidermied and felted-wool animals (a deer, a bald eagle, a raccoon) cluster onstage to set the scene. Employing a robot-like movement quality, Light enters to perform as both hunter and hunted. When the Hunter shoots Bambi, leaving the near-dead deer gasping for breath to go off in search of human bounty (an escaped prisoner), a tragicomic ethical dilemma unfolds: what should the forest animals do for their friend? A philosophical debate about the value of life and inevitability of death unfolds, with little resolution for the furry friends.

Elena Rose Light is a queer feminist c h o r e o g r a p h e r attempting to make work from a place of critical whiteness. She read canonical texts in Yale’s art history department and has since been schooling herself through the 2016 danceWEB scholarship program, the 2016 Dance Institute for Leadership Training, the 2016-17 LANDING program with Miguel Gutierrez, and the 2017 NYU Hemispheric Institute EMERGENYC program. Elena has been in residence at Chez Bushwick (2017), The School of Making Thinking (2015 & 2017) and Earthdance (2016). She has presented her work at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, Center for Performance Research, The Current Sessions, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, among other venues. Elena has also performed in the work of Bouchra Ouizguen, Tino Sehgal, Asad Raza, Bruno Isakovic, Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey, and she has acted as an agent for The Bureau for the Future of Choreography.