One Red: On Biology and Loving You

Choreographed and performed by Emily Kozik

What began as an exploration in process – letting a gene sequence determine a movement sequence – has become an amalgam of things I love: movement, flowers, cell biology, Maya Angelou, and the color red.

Music -“Holocene” by Bon Iver
Imagery – free footage from Videvo
Poetry – “Touched by an Angel” by Maya Angelou

The Pitch

Two facts:

1. mutation in a gene known as p53 is associated with over half of all cancers.

2. p53 is the most studied gene in the scientific literature to date.

Three fascinations:

1. a small mutation can have a lasting impact on a body, a family, a society

2. science, a seemingly objective subject, is led to paths that affect many at their deepest core.

3. cancer patients and survivors can have the most uplifting messages.

Artist’s Statement

**The gene that’s associated with more than half of all cancers is also the most studied gene in the scientific literature.**

This fact humanized science for me. As a scientist, it is humbling to know that though we are meant to be curious in an objective way, we are led by emotions and empathy. Further, medicine serves humans at a threshold where one has lost or is losing what was once thought of as control over their biology. I am interested in this interface between objective logic and pure human emotion. The pristine, sterile walls of a hospital contain heightened feelings of fear, love, sorrow and gratitude. The effects of our biology trigger very human experiences of love and loss. In Angelou’s “Touched by Angel”, she speaks of the fear that comes with courageous love – the way that it is difficult to love something when you know someday, you’ll have to let it go. She takes it a step further. Without this courageous love, do we really live? I ask, When we are closest to death, do we begin to start living?

**Point mutations have been described with a cute metaphor in biology textbooks: a black pearl among a string white pearls.**

This was a point of inspiration for the opening of One Red
I wanted to give this string of pearls a context…
(And, make the black one red- a warning, love, blood)
The girl is born.

She is a symbol of innocence and she exists as part of nature. A testament to the fact that we humans are all made of the same components as the nature around us. We are no different except in our organization. Our goals are the same- to live in this world and leave something behind whether it be offspring, an important discovery, or a piece of art. Projections of nature and the girl existing in a natural world bring this aspect to the piece.

While contemplating the depth of these thoughts, Bon Iver’s self-titled album began to play. It has an atmospheric sound and “Holocene” provides a humbling perspective. “Our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there’s a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song,” explains Vernon in an interview with NPR. This tensions and vastness in the lyrics and sounds reflect what it feels like when seemingly contradictory ideas meld together: research and empathy, a mutated gene and a loved one’s life, a logical diagnosis and the flood of emotion, significance in insignificance, the list goes on…

Interview: https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2011/06/23/137328981/bon-ivers-justin-vernon-talks-about-his-bands-new-album

Director’s Notes

One Red: On Biology and Loving You began as an exploration in process. It utilizes the sequences that nature has created in the human genome as a score for movement – inspired by Merce Cunningham’s elaborate schemes and games of chance to develop choreography (mercecunningham.org/about/merce-cunningham). Several texts were used as material to assign movements to the amino acids in the sequence. Here, each of the texts supplies another layer of information and ideas to draw into the piece. The finalized movement sequence is constructed from the first 30 amino acids in the gene of interest: p53. On scores, Burrows describes the score “as a conscious way to distance you from the thing you are making or doing” (Burrows p. 142). The score allowed me to freely create movement without having to worry about the arc of the piece. This was up to nature.

Though basically chosen at random, p53 became the origin from which many other ideas stemmed. I asked myself, “How far can this idea spread?” and “Where will it take me?”. I allowed myself to absorb and consider all that I came across during research for text sources and inspiration. What came first was this fact: mutation in p53 is associated with over half of all cancers. And then followed: p53 is the most studied gene in all of the human genome.

These facts humanized science for me. As a scientist, it was humbling to know that though we are meant to be curious in an objective way, we are led by emotions and empathy. I wanted to explore this interface between objective logic and the emotional wo

rld. To bring this emotional aspect to light, “Touched by an Angel” by Angelou was a valuable resource for the dance. This three-stanza poem was used as one of the aforementioned texts as a source for movement. For the objective and scientific perspective, I gathered keywords from a lecture on cell cycle regulation, which plays an important role in the growth of tumors. Together these two texts infuse layers of both aspects of this interface to the choreography.

As research continued further, other elements were layered with the movement in the form of projections, music, costuming, a small flower on the stage, and lighting. I wanted to bring some humanity to the piece – a “non-narrative narrative” as Celeste Miller calls it. Miller’s techniques for incorporating text and movement became the flame for creating such a narrative and a metaphor for point mutations became the kindle. I wrote several words that describe an innocent, nature-loving girl, “and among her string of white pearls, one red.” Creating a movement sequence based on an online biology lecture, I layered them together as we had previously done in a class activity on Miller’s technique, and this became the opening section of the piece.

Lastly, I was inspired by colleague Naomi Warob. At the end of performance art piece for one, Little Ida’s Flowers, Warob offers her single audience member a freshly cut flower and sees them off. I was inspired by the sentiment of providing a gift for the audience. Thus, I decided to incorporate that into One Red in the form of a small notes distributed to the audience by all of the choreographer’s in our performance. On the note, there is a question relating to cancer biology and an answer is written in the form of a reminder, a letter, a poem, anything that resonates with the frequency of love and gratitude. From this, I hope the audience takes with them hope and a feeling of love as well as a new perspective on the humanity that is so connected to biology and medicine.

Citations:

Burrows, Jonathan. A Choreographer’s Handbook., 2010. Internet resource.

As it relates to Doris Humphrey….