Modern Living

Modern Living is a multi-chapter project by choreographers Gerard & Kelly made in collaboration with L.A. Dance Project to explore themes of queer intimacy and domestic space within legacies of modernist architecture. The project began as two site-specific dance performances, which the duo then took to EMPAC to translate into a gallery installation integrating architectural forms and video projection. This work-in-progress presentation took audiences behind the scenes of Modern Living.

In 2016, Gerard & Kelly choreographed nine dancers in performances at the landmark Schindler House in West Hollywood, CA, the site of an early experiment in communal living, and Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, CT, where the architect and his partner David Whitney lived for over 40 years. The performances investigated the livability of queer space—
its pleasures, tensions, and impossibilities—and were filmed for the next iteration of the project. Gerard & Kelly were in residence with their technical and artistic collaborators to build the installation to scale, experimenting with architecture, projection mapping, and sound. 

Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly have collaborated since 2003 to create installations and performances interrogating the formation of the couple and exploring the critical potential of intimacy. Driven by an inquiry of their own partnership, the duo uses choreography, language, video, and sculpture to address questions of sexuality, memory, and the formation of queer consciousness.