Creating a Radioactive Practice
A rigorous, highly physical exposé of identity and culture, Radioactive Practice has had a unique journey of exploration, fruition, destruction, and transformation, leading to its realization and continuing evolution on the stage. Choreographer Abby Zbikowski, in collaboration with performers from wide-ranging movement backgrounds in street dance, post-modern dance, contemporary African forms, tap, artistic swimming, soccer, competitive show choir, and martial arts, utilize their individual histories to investigate what is beyond the currently known—the impossible—to create an unique shared-movement language for this work.
Longtime dancer and rehearsal director, Fiona Lundie, invites you to peek into the history of this new dance work.
Initial movement research began back in September 2017 on the heels of Zbikowski’s first evening-length work abandoned playground in April, being named an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer in Residence at Princeton University in June, and receiving the Juried Bessie in July. An underlying principle is the idea of forceful, energetic movement radiating from a nucleus of resistance in the body and affecting space and other bodies, whether or not in direct contact. Because the forces move in multiple directions three-dimensionally into space, the quality and character of the movement is distinct from Zbikowski’s previous group work.
It also inspired the “Radioactive” part of the title, referencing the physics of radioactivity—releasing energized particles from the nucleus, which have varying amounts of energy to affect atoms and molecules across distance—as well as invoking power, danger, and superhumanness (i.e., challenging the preconceived notions of what humans are capable of).
The latter part of the title—“Practice”—comes from the reality that these movement explorations never end, but rather are in a state of constant refining, discovery, and pushing beyond what we think we know and can do, even as patterns condense, choreography forms, and consistency is found.
Versions of these early phrases exist in the current work, some in similar but far better-known form, and others transformed through processes in rehearsal. Zbikowski may teach a phrase, then ask for each dancer to transform that phrase within certain guidelines.
The result bears the unique movement and personal history of each dancer, who teaches one or more of the group their version, revealing a personal sense of logic and interpretation, which is reshaped as the group synthesizes the information. In this way, Zbikowski and the dancers build a shared language to communicate about the movement and a shared value system about their goals for it.
Each performance of the phrase offers another transformation of the dancers’ individual body states: Are they fresh from a break offstage? Exhausted after a rigorous section? Or, in the final push to the end of the piece, wringing out the last of their energy?
In April 2018, New York Live Arts announced Zbikowski as a two-year Live Feed artist-in-residence, which included a world premiere in the spring of the second year. She took a sabbatical from the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, in the fall of 2018 to work more intensively with a group of 9–12 dancers in New York, prioritizing open research over dictating the shape of the work at this stage. In October, Zbikowski was named one of four recipients of a “Choreographer of the Future” award by Dance Umbrella UK, involving commissioning funds and a slot in the 2020 Festival as a celebration of its 40-year anniversary. Momentum was gaining both in the choreography and the anticipated performance schedule of the work.
The first public showing of ideas was at NYLiveArts studios in its platform Live Artery, as part of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference in January 2019, followed by a more developed 20-minute preview in upstate New York in April 2019 and a 25-minute work-in-progress showing at NYLiveArts in May. Zbikowski talks about the choreography of Radioactive Practice lying beyond the currently known, so what we as the performers will end up performing in 2020 could not have been done without passing through these versions. In the fall, a cast of 10 dancers was solidified: Alexa Bender, Serena Chang, Indya Childs, Roobi Gaskins, Alex Gossen, Gabrielle Loren, Fiona Lundie, Jennifer Meckley, Benjamin Roach, and Meghann Trago.
Everything was taking shape for 2020 to be the most significant year so far for Abby Z and the New Utility: named a U.S. Artist Fellow in January, Zbikowski would premiere her second evening-length work at a prestigious NYC venue on March 18, immediately tour it, including at the American Dance Festival, and end the year with the first international performance of her work at the Dance Umbrella Festival in London. After 700 hours in rehearsal building Radioactive Practice, exhausting all the commission funds, and mere days before the anticipated premiere, the show was postponed indefinitely as all theaters across New York City shut down in response to the Covid-19 virus spreading throughout the city.
We began meeting over Zoom for rehearsals to maintain our sense of community, inhabit the physical concepts of the work, and continue to experiment with the material to deepen our body knowledge across disparate spaces as we waited for information about the future of the work. However, in December 2020, with no end in sight for the global pandemic and no assurance of whether or when we could ever do this work, the company went on hiatus.
In March, Zbikowski began masked solo rehearsals in her basement with a couple of dancers living within driving distance of her new home in Columbus, Ohio, working not for an end goal or performance, but because, at the core, she is choreographer and they are dancers. In July 2021, in-person rehearsals began with four of the original cast: Lundie, Meckley, Roach, Gossen, and a new dancer, Kashia Kancey, plus a special new company addition: Zbikowski’s 2-month-old son.
Our new premiere date was set for May 2022, as NYLiveArts extended Zbikowski’s artist-in-residency. Lane Czaplinski at the Wexner Center for the Arts crucially provided space and financial support for a five-week residency in September 2021 to rebuild Radioactive Practice for the shifting, halting terrain emerging post-shutdown. Jodee Nimerichter also heroically came through with more commissioning funds from American Dance Festival, and many original tour venues rescheduled our performances. Inviting jinsei sato in September, we solidified the new cast of six dancers—small enough to all be allowed in a room together, big enough to sustain such an energetic evening-length work.
While the nuclear ideas of the work remain the same, the 2022 version reflects the isolation, struggle, and sense of pause of the Covid shutdown. Where the 2020 version took physical contact for granted with significant partnerwork, involving dancers physically redirecting each other in space, the 2022 version builds a sense of connection remotely throughout; physical contact serves as a higher-stakes development in a post-lockdown landscape. A little over 600 rehearsal hours occurred between the original and actual premiere, making the total over five years and 1,300 hours of creation work.
Our week-long run at NYLiveArts was capped off by an outdoor performance in Times Square, followed by the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh; Dance Place in Washington, D.C.; the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C.; the Meany Center in Seattle; and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Due to the continuing complexities of international travel, Dance Umbrella commissioned a film version of the work for its 2022 festival. We partnered with Jeremy Jacob to realize a version that doesn’t seek to archive or replace the live theatrical version, but to complement it. It was the most watched content on Dance Umbrella’s digital platform that year.
Continued interest in Radioactive Practice inspired a second wave of touring in the 2023–24 season, though two dancers from the cast had moved on to other work. Indya Childs was able to recommit to the project, and Mya McClellan, a former student of Zbikowski’s in Illinois, joined the cast. With almost a year between our performances recommenced at White Bird in Portland, Oregon, the act of acquainting new dancers to engage with the work was refreshing.
After a run in Portland, we performed at Swarthmore College in January, followed by Austin, Texas, for the Fusebox Festival in April, before heading to Minnesota for our Walker Art Center engagement. The intimate, in-the-round seating emphasizes that the relationship between performers and audience is not one-way; rather, both contribute to the space and energy. We appreciate the opportunity to share ourselves and this work with Minneapolis audiences. Thank you for adding to the rich history of this piece!▪︎
Experience Abby Z and the New Utility: Radioactive Practice for yourself at the Walker Art Center, May 15–18, 2024. Learn more and get tickets here.
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