Sibling Reverie: Adina & Arielle Bier
Adina Bier & Arielle Bier are finishing up a performance piece tomorrow entitled You Are My Carbon Copy And This Is Our Lair on view at Alice Chilton Gallery in Williamsburg.
Of the 30 minutes I saw yesterday (they’ve been performing 6 hour segments over the past 3 weekends) it keeps true to their promises of “twinning” and butoh-inspired movement. But that’s a facile description. Yes, they’re really sisters and, yes, they have on heavy face make-up & move in seemingly non-choreographed but stylized patterns. But there is more there than that. An aspect of forced youth, of psychological neotony, plays at odds with the menace of their costuming & gestures. At times they fall into tug-of-war with the knotted band that keeps the two connected but then one falls to the floor in fetal position while the other capriciously covers her with the shredded paper strewn across the space. I’m reminded of the proto-animal environs of Eiko & Koma minus the somnambulence but with an added athleticism.
