The project began when Gerard and Kelly encountered Tino Sehgal’s Kiss in an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In Kiss a man and a woman perform a slow, languorous embrace. Struck by the ephemerality of the piece and its consistent boy/girl casting, they returned a number of times to learn its choreography. Under the watchful eyes of museum guards, they spoke the couple’s movements into hidden voice-recorders. This resulted in a twelve-minute audio recording of the artists’ observations of the Kiss dancers’ movements in real time. (“His hands on her lower back…her arms around his shoulders…they turn ooooone huuuundred aaaaaaand eiiiiiiiighty deeeeeegrees.”). Gerard and Kelly used this audio recording as a score for movement in their attempt to reconstruct Kiss with critical differences. The languorous embrace of the couple becomes a series of solo performances, with each dancer enacting both male and female roles on his own body.

Set & Lighting Design

A performance installation by Gerard & Kelly at the Danspace Project in November 2011

costume design by Camille Assaf

Read the New York Times review