Looks Like Sounds Like
part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival - September 10, 2020 - October 4, 2020
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Tickets: Pay What You Want
Free, but donations are welcome! You are encouraged to support the artists!
An evening-length improvisation by dance/percussion duo stb x at. "Looks Like Sounds Like" features drums, flower pots, pans, and cymbals alongside jumps, twists, turns, and inversions. A fully online experience - join us for gongs and grooves, kicks and rattles, jingles and angles.
Special thanks to the FringeArts Soundstage Team
for production and recording this performance:
Taylor Jedlinski, Evelyn Shuker, Kelly Orenshaw, April Rose
for production and recording this performance:
Taylor Jedlinski, Evelyn Shuker, Kelly Orenshaw, April Rose
Looks Like Sounds Like
Philadelphia, 2020
"Asya Zlatina and Sean Thomas Boyt were among Philadelphia’s most innovative dance artists before the pandemic, and their 2020 Fringe Festival entries demonstrate their ability to keep creating in new and different ways. Combining movement with technology, sound, and collaboration, #Quarantineksvkhvkhkdvhai and Looks Like Sounds Like—from Artist House/Asya Zlatina & Dancers and stb x at, respectively—are two different yet complementary pieces well worth seeing.
stb x at is Boyt’s collaboration with percussionist Andy Thierauf. For the past eight years, the duo has collaborated on work that transcends discipline and genre. Their devotion to experimentation lends itself to Boyt’s rejection of dance’s gender norms—a graceful dancer with elegant limbs, he often performs wearing a dress. Looks Like Sounds Like is an improvisation, and a full-length piece, which feels like a treat these days. Longer dances were not unusual pre-pandemic, but ongoing closures make it tough for artists to develop, rehearse, stage, and perform them.
Filmed onstage in a theater without an audience and streaming on the artists’ website, Looks Like Sounds Like captures the current state of the performing arts. The last of its three scenes was a standout, with red lights illuminating Thierauf as he played piercing notes on a marimba while Boyt entered by rolling across the stage in a white dress with a gauzy underskirt. As the red lights turned blue and the marimba sounded haunting, dreamy tones, Boyt looked from side to side, kicked one leg, and fell forward to the floor, landing catlike on his hands. He portrayed a character torn between fantasy and nightmare, bringing to mind Blanche DuBois in the Varsouviana scene in A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as life during COVID."
- Melissa Strong, Broad Street Review
"This number is a study in contrasts. Movement vs. stillness. Sound vs. silence. Boyt’s flailing, seemingly nonchalant arm movements contrast Thierauf’s controlled, measured strikes with the sticks. Boyt’s body is a contrast, too: The fluidity in their upper torso, their head moving like a bobblehead in slow motion, is in marked contrast to the often angular motions of their legs, kicking out at right angles, feet flexed."
- Darcy Grabenstein, thINKingDANCE
Philadelphia, 2020
"Asya Zlatina and Sean Thomas Boyt were among Philadelphia’s most innovative dance artists before the pandemic, and their 2020 Fringe Festival entries demonstrate their ability to keep creating in new and different ways. Combining movement with technology, sound, and collaboration, #Quarantineksvkhvkhkdvhai and Looks Like Sounds Like—from Artist House/Asya Zlatina & Dancers and stb x at, respectively—are two different yet complementary pieces well worth seeing.
stb x at is Boyt’s collaboration with percussionist Andy Thierauf. For the past eight years, the duo has collaborated on work that transcends discipline and genre. Their devotion to experimentation lends itself to Boyt’s rejection of dance’s gender norms—a graceful dancer with elegant limbs, he often performs wearing a dress. Looks Like Sounds Like is an improvisation, and a full-length piece, which feels like a treat these days. Longer dances were not unusual pre-pandemic, but ongoing closures make it tough for artists to develop, rehearse, stage, and perform them.
Filmed onstage in a theater without an audience and streaming on the artists’ website, Looks Like Sounds Like captures the current state of the performing arts. The last of its three scenes was a standout, with red lights illuminating Thierauf as he played piercing notes on a marimba while Boyt entered by rolling across the stage in a white dress with a gauzy underskirt. As the red lights turned blue and the marimba sounded haunting, dreamy tones, Boyt looked from side to side, kicked one leg, and fell forward to the floor, landing catlike on his hands. He portrayed a character torn between fantasy and nightmare, bringing to mind Blanche DuBois in the Varsouviana scene in A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as life during COVID."
- Melissa Strong, Broad Street Review
"This number is a study in contrasts. Movement vs. stillness. Sound vs. silence. Boyt’s flailing, seemingly nonchalant arm movements contrast Thierauf’s controlled, measured strikes with the sticks. Boyt’s body is a contrast, too: The fluidity in their upper torso, their head moving like a bobblehead in slow motion, is in marked contrast to the often angular motions of their legs, kicking out at right angles, feet flexed."
- Darcy Grabenstein, thINKingDANCE
