Gospels of Oblivion is a new work from emerging choreographer Taja Will. The era is Oblivion, sometime in the future immediately before humans become extinct. The surviving world is one of simultaneous decay and glamour. A trio of performers made up in wigs and sequins engage in singing the world’s anthem, ‘Are you still breathing?’ They communicate via tin can phone and use an idiosyncratic gesture language. They speak about their search for a new Super(S)hero and try to keep each other alive while maintaining poise in the glamour of this culture.
Choreographer Taja Will is a queer, Latina adoptee. Her work reflects inquiry around our socio-cultural realities, the personal meditations of the minority voice and an ongoing commitment to somatic intelligence in movement. Will’s work lives in a three dimensional world of contemporary performance, sewing together conceptual research with a marriage of the sonic and kinetic.
Will’s has recently received commissions from the American Composer’s Forum Live Music for Dance program, Isolated Acts and Works-in-Progress with the Red Eye Theater, Alternative Motion Project, Hamline University and Luther College. Her work has also been curated into the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening and Renovate Choreographer’s Evening. She has performed the work of Body Cartography Project, Sasha Klienplatz, Rosy Simas, Off- Leash Area, RAW Dance Collective, Company Blu, Miguel Gutierrez, Lynn Andrews and Cathy Wright.
Will is also an educator, offering intensives and workshops throughout the United States in somatic movement, improvisation skills and contact improvisation. In addition to dance making, Will works at the Seward Coop and maintains a holistic healing practice in somatic bodywork, energy medicine and developmental psychotherapy.