Sterling & Dresden - Partner Rope Dart - Dart Democracy

At Dart Democracy’s open stage! Sterling and I did an improvised partner dart performance sight reading a song we were both hearing for the first time. This was at the end of a long day of play and exploration with so much assembled talent, and I think it shows! There are a lot of movement themes here represented in terms of different ways to pass and transition a single dart, from direct wraps onto the other person to stalls to shots through the air. There’s also varying amounts degrees of contact between us, varying from holding each other in some traditional embraces found in partner dance forms like blues to holding the rope tense between us to simple mirroring from afar. Since we were sight reading the song, we were also guessing at what was going to come next and how to make a coherent lyrical story out of our movements with each other - which is the default practice in blues/tango/fusion dance scene, but a little more unusual with fire dancers, where story through improvised movement is a less common practice. Sterling and I been having a lot of fun mapping out all the ways we can move with each other these last few months on our trips to each other’s cities. It’s been exhilarating dovetailing these efforts with other partner fusion efforts with Rachel Fong and other amazing movement artists. More to come! Song is “There’s No Way“, by Lauv. Selected by Baltazar, who was DJ’ing the event. Video was captured by Jon “Moose“ Erickson - thank you again!