According to Erika Tsimbrovsky and Vadim Puyandaev of Avy K Productions dance can be improvisational, immersive, participatory. Entering their current installation at SOMArts I felt as if I myself was walking onto a stage, with lights, free-standing walls, and painted backdrops scattered tantalizingly around the gallery. Indeed the exhibit is really meant to be inhabited, and over the course of the show Tsimbrovsky and Puyandaev have invited artists and dancers to perform and create work that metaphorically adds pages to the book they have prepared. You can go now and see videos and photographs documenting some of Avy K's work, suggestions of movement, of connection and separation. There is a back gallery in which the floor is covered with long strips of plastic while mechanically-generated lines and grids shimmer in one corner. Puyandaev's abstract paintings adorn some of the walls, and he has also created a "garden" out of sheets of hanging paper and light. But really you should go Friday night for the closing when the entire space will be activated with dancers, projections, and the audience members themselves, each person bringing their own cache of memories and experiences through which to interpret the proceedings.
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