Chandelier

Chandelier was a collaborative live performance that adopted the choreography of a chorus-line to investigate hyperbolic expressivity and the performativity of materials. Staged within the opulent surroundings of the Vancouver Art Gallery, a spectacle of tearful expression was enacted by a synchronized chorus of amateur and professional performers. Playing with performance registers that varied between crescendos of hysteria and sincere sorrow, the performers gathered, circled banisters, collapsed atop a grand piano and wept rhinestone tears throughout the exhibitions. Through an exploration of theatrical illusion and the collapsing boundaries between comedy and tragedy, Chandelier aimed to explore the relationship between the representation of maximalist femininity, affect and the “terrible beauty” of psychic rupture.