Beth Gill Catacomb

“These dancers are like electrical currents, and Ms. Gill, with her usual deft sensitivity, tunes us into their vibrations.”—New York Times

Bessie Award–winning, New York City–based dance artist Beth Gill makes her Wex debut with her latest piece, Catacomb. The new work is designed to respond to the specific architectural qualities of each venue, and the unique geometry of our Performance Space will provide an ideal framework for its rigorously precise choreography that transfigures bodies in space—Gill’s hallmark.

For Catacomb, Gill was inspired by the circuitous inner worlds of the imagination and the subconscious, and her work constantly shifts our attention as observers, drawing us further into these restless realms of the mind. In this mysterious, dreamlike atmosphere, simultaneously intimate and surreal, the dancers explore deep psychological terrain as they proceed: gathering meaning, layering nuanced gesture, building subtle tension, and ultimately, disappearing.

As a glowing New York Times review noted of Catacomb, though “Ms. Gill delves into more emotional territory....her choreography loses none of its exacting focus of position, whether dancers are crouched in the corner like debris or moving through angular poses that transform bodies, however briefly, into sculptures. But the subconscious is also at play.” Picking up that thread, another Times review concluded: “her expedition occurs in a surreal, dreamlike space where the unpredictable topography is that of the psyche.”

Note: There will be no late seating for this performance. 

The presentation of Beth Gill's Catacomb was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Wexner Center is an NPN Partner of the National Performance Network (NPN). This project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Performance Residency Program. Major contributors of NPN include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), the MetLife Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.