FLESH

Artist Statement
"Flesh" is a performance meditation that draws its inspiration from three sources. First from the mystery and hope in Meredith Monk's music. "Flesh" is also loosely based on a short story by E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops. Written in l909, The Machine Stops takes place sometime in this future. In Forster's prediction, humanity lives in a giant underground, mechanized complex and is kept alive by the machine's intensive care. The story unfolds around the relationship between a mother and son. The mother along with most civilization, lives in glorious isolation, in touch with everything through swift technology; physical contact has become abhorrent and an encounter with the natural world tantamount to death. Her son is subversively physical and manages to travel to the surface where he has encountered people still living on the earth. It is here that Flesh begins, meditating on the survivors, the new surface dwellers who are clawing their way back through the memory of death and isolation to bring about yet another world, one without precedent, one with hope and fury.

"Flesh" is of course mostly inspired by the performers, themselves, who are their own kind of survivor and purveyors of a new world of radical physicality and outrage.

Flesh (2004)
Choreography: Ann Carlson
Dancers: AXIS Dance Company
Music: Meredith Monk
Change
Meredith Monk, Dick Higgins: Voice
Available on KEY, LCD 1051

Scared Song
Meredith Monk: Voice, Synthesizer
Nurit Tilles: Piano
Available on DO YOU BE, ECM New Series, 831 782-2

Gotham Lullaby
Meredith Monk: Voice, Piano
The Tale
Meredith Monk: Voice
Steve Lockwood: Piano
Available on DOLMEN MUSIC, ECM New Series, 825 459-2

Engine Steps
Tape Collage
Available on TURTLE DREAMS, ECM New Series, 811 547-2

© Meredith Monk (ASCAP)
© ECM Records
© Lovely Music
Text: Excerpted from E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops
Lighting Design: Alexander V. Nichols
Costume Design: Mario Alonzo & Ann Carlson