Abstract 

Can we tell story in a non-linear and non-verbal way? In a time consisting of various positionalities, points of view, practices of law, and languages, can multiple stories exist in one performance piece to share a sort of affect— a real-time story unfolding between the viewer and the performers, simultaneously touching on topics such as identity, gestural cultural lexicon, agency, memory, and the liminal spaces between cultures? There is a poetry in this, just as there is a poetry in the coexistence of many “things” at once, in this world. With so much complexity and intersection, words alone might not suffice for the felt understanding that people experience with one another. attuning flesh and bone is a piece that utilizes and highlights movement, voice, sound, and visuals as a means to share story, where ‘embodiment’ is the place that ‘metaphor’ and ‘tangible’ can meet in a felt way. Through the act of invitation, attendance, presence, giving, and receiving between the performers on stage and their relation to the audience, this piece hopes to evoke affective and kinesthetic responses, as a practice of empathic energetic exchange amidst sameness and difference— a moment of felt connection that, in its own way, holds valid truth in real-time. 

Keywords: gesture and repetition; story; felt knowledge; communal rhythm; temporal non-linearity; cultural gestural lexicon 

photos by Joseph Malbon

photos by Mikela Vuorensivu