Rhythm Bath is a suite of performance-installations by choreographer Susan Marshall and set designer Mimi Lien. The project builds on Marshall's 35+ years of dance work and is informed by her life with her neurodiverse, art-loving adult son. His way of inhabiting cultural spaces-sometimes lying on the floor, interacting with lights and surfaces, vocalizing, exploring boundaries-invites the project's central inquiry: can we use choreography, textural surfaces, physical structures, sound, and light to create an environment that encourages different ways of being (and being together) as performers and audience members? Rhythm Bath is being created in conversation with people living with neurodiversities such as autism and apraxia-conditions that can make it uncomfortable to conform to normative theater viewing. Appealing to both neurodiverse and neurotypical audiences, Rhythm Bath is an arts experience in which a certain way of being in-or controlling-one's body is not privileged.
Land acknowledgement: land of the Lenape
Estimated artist fee: $25,000/performance; $40,000/weekly residency