Vincent van Gogh’s paintings live on in our everyday lives: go into any gift shop and you might come across his paintings on a magnet, a card or even a pair of socks. He is one of the most notorious artists in the world, claiming worldwide fame only after his tragic death. Many know his paintings but far fewer know his story.
Local art collective American Communal Industries has built an immersive experience that explores van Gogh’s life through dance, highlighting the rhythm of the relationships the artist had with his brother, his companions, his muse, his doctor and even himself. The limited-run show opened on Oct. 4 and will run only two more nights, Fri. Oct. 10 and Sat. Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. at MotherShip Studios, located at 20027 San Marcos Hwy. 80. Seating is limited and expected to sell out. Get tickets at wwvd.show. The event is partially funded by a grant received from the City of San Marcos Arts Commission.
Although the dance begins at 8 p.m. the doors open at 7 p.m., allowing guests to walk through a labyrinth of the artist’s memory constructed specially for the event. Similar to a haunted house, guests move through floating walls decorated with details of van Gogh’s life, from 8-foot-tall recreations of his paintings to a forest of suspended tree limbs that sway in an eerie yet familiar manner.
Before the performance, guests are invited into a studio space that has been transformed into an absinthe speakeasy. Vincent’s drink of choice is blended with lemonade to create a libation that liberates guests from the everyday world, allowing them to immerse themselves into 19th-century Europe. Inside the bar are sketches of van Gogh’s work, suspended in air and in time. Guests are then seated to embark on the journey of van Gogh’s life, told through the art of dance. Performers move through the periods of the artist’s life from childhood, to his career, to his time spent in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. The final acts take the audience through van Gogh’s relationships with his brother Theo, his artistic companion Paul Gaugin, his muse Sien Hoornik and his doctor Paul Gachet, ending on his most intense relationship, with Death itself.
The performance captivated the audience on opening night, with all eyes locked in on the dancers. No words were spoken yet much was communicated through the language of dance. Intense lighting and a cathartic sound track swelled as the dancers moved through the acts.
Although the performance run is only three shows, the pre-production took many months to plan, practice, organize and execute.
What started as an idea to transform the studio space into a haunted house quickly evolved to focus on Vincent van Gogh.
“I had always envisioned the show having dance because it’s heavily inspired by Sleep No More in New York City, which is this immersive theater experience where dancers move among the audience as they’re exploring the space, and they do like a lot of gestures and partner dancing and stuff to convey a narrative,” Artistic Director Brandon Michaels said.
“I always wanted that to be part of this experience, but I didn’t know how to actually realize that until I had met Marilyn, who’s been in the dance scene for forever in Austin.”
Michaels partnered with choreographer Marilyn Connelly to co-direct the show. They worked together with dancers Matthew Sommers who played Theo, Lindsey Gerson who played Gaugin, Felix Menke who played Sien, and Sarah Wingfield who played Dr. Gachet. For months the dancers devised choreography that explored the life and relationships of Vincent van Gogh.
Connelly played van Gogh, both organizing the dances and performing them.
“I get I’m most inspired by relationships in my choreographic work,” Connelly said.
“I would say the most important relationship in Van Gogh’s life was with his brother, Theo. He basically funded Van Gogh’s work for his entire life and his lifestyle, and was there kind of at every point of the way, taking care of him and kind of helping him through all of these issues. So getting to work with Matthew, who plays our Theo was really nice, because we were able to kind of put some of our own friendship, like laying that over it, and it kind of made us closer,” Connelly said.
Paired with original music and soundscaping from Dain (Ensorcell) and Henry Rodgers, the story of the artist’s life started to come together through the mix of movement and sound. Dramatic lighting designed by Ollie Sofield set the stage for a moody and intense vision.
The set itself took just as much planning and constructing as the performances. MotherShip Studios is built in a long warehouse space, with artist studios on each side, opening up to an exhibition area where the main dancing took place. Michaels used this long corridor to lay out a path for the audience to walk through, transporting them from a warehouse in the outskirts of San Marcos into the fractured psyche of van Gogh. The creative team commissioned local craftsman and artist Sebastian Stoddart to build professional walls, which separated the space into a winding corridor that artists filled with visual easter eggs of van Gogh’s life. Jessamyn Plotts was the Scenic Designer and helped to form cohesion through all the moving parts.
“To honor van Gogh we have to do justice to his painting and drawing, so I decided that I was going to make these massive recreations of his paintings, but with these kind of surrealistic elements, because we’d always described the experience as being kind of an eerie and beautiful retelling of his life,” Plotts said.
Through the help of other art collective members like Kennedy Swift and her TXST students, Plotts was able to organize creative sessions which produced larger-than-life recreations of van Gogh’s famous paintings which hung suspended in the gallery. Contributing artists include Dianna Sexton, Maya Soto, Connor Davis, Samaria Ortiz and Victoria Scott, with conceptual design by Ryan Montgomery.
Plotts addressed the creation of these set pieces as a way to connect to the artist himself.
“If I make these monumental paintings, it would be hard and intense to do it, just like [van Gogh’s] work was so hard and so intense for him to do. I’m going to experientially embody van Gogh and make these massive things, and then that ended up evolving into more large-scale drawings within the space and some installation work,” Plotts said.
“Art is a living thing. It’s something that is happening that people can be directly experiencing. It’s not a clean-cut process, van Gogh’s life wasn’t a clean-cut thing. I think it’s really necessary right now so that’s part of what we’re trying to bring to the table.”
“What Would Vincent Do?” runs this weekend for its final shows. Seating is limited and tickets are available at wwvd.show.
