the beauty and ruin of friends of bodies

Nol Simonse presents his new full-length duet, "the beauty and ruin of friends of bodies," made and performed with Christy Funsch, October 28-29, 2017, at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco. "the beauty and ruin of friends of bodies" takes its title from an unfinished manuscript of author Samuel Delaney. Taking Delaney’s unfulfilled fragment as a launching point, the beauty and ruin of friends of bodies is frames the 17 year collaborative partnership of Simonse and Funsch as a mythic ride amid fragile, illusory, and indefatigable territories of the body. Funsch and Simonse first worked together in Sue Roginski’s choreography in 2000, and they deepened their partnership during an 11-year tenure with Stephen Pelton Dance Theater. They have been in much of each other's work over the years: Simonse made his first duet (“Joyful Girl”) for the pair in 2004. In 2011, Simonse reimagined The Breakfast Club as a full-length, punk rock duet for the duo titled Etudes in Detention (for which they received an Izzie Ensemble Performance nomination). Funsch has made several solos for Simonse, including her 2012 “Kneel Before Fire,” and she has often situated duets for the pair in her full-length group works such as This is the Girl (2014), and last year’s Le grand spectacle de l’effort et de l’artifice (2016).