Cave Dogs, a gathering of visual artists, musicians, dancers, storytellers and writers with roots in the SUNY New Paltz School of Fine & Performing Arts, presented their most recent production, a multimedia performance called Liquid States, in Denmark and Sweden this winter.
The Cave Dogs project has been active for more than 25 years. It includes Professor Suzanne Stokes, Associate Professor James Fossett and Instructional Support Technician Adam Mastropaolo, who represented the New Paltz Department of Art alongside their creative partners at the Academy for Moderne Circus in Copenhagen and at the opening of the Skissermas Museum in Lund.
The Jan. 25 performance in Denmark built on a network the Cave Dogs began to establish last year, through a series of workshops with students in Copenhagen.
In Sweden, the Cave Dogs’ Jan. 28 performance marked the opening of the recently renovated Skissermas Museum, which emphasizes public art and the process of creation.
“It is a great honor for us to be invited to be one of three performances at this grand opening, and the only performers invited from the United States,” Stokes said.
Liquid States, the latest Cave Dogs production, is a compilation of short stories performed using a large-scale shadow projection, featuring an array of props, costumes, performance styles and an original soundtrack by Grammy Award winner Dean Jones. The stories are connected by a rich and diverse study of water: as substance, as metaphor, and as a geographically determined, politicized resource.
“The mobility of our light sources allow us to create multiple, richly layered visual tableaus, and produce effects that conjure both the dreamlike quality of early experimental film and the humor of contemporary animation,” Stokes said. “We use scale to create complex dynamics and images to enhance meaning in sound. We coax trees to grow and teach whales to sing. It’s magical, like watching dreams cross into the conscious world.”
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