• ARTS & CULTURE • Collective brings modern dance to Museum of Neon Art By Bridgette M. Redman Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer
Photos courtesy of Museum of Neon Art
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eon lights have stories to tell, stories that can be simultaneously physical and historic. The stories of California’s retired neon signs have inspired a site-specific, immersive dance concert, “In Liquid Light,” set for that will be performed Thursday, March 3, to Sunday, March 6, at the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale. The Volta Collective’s founders and directors, Mamie Green and Megan Paradowski, said the space and the donated signs inspired them. The Volta Collective is a modern dance company that pursues multidisciplinary approaches to its art. “Volta is really about bringing contemporary dance to nontraditional spaces,” Paradowski said. “When we saw how the space presented itself, we were pretty quick to jump on that.” After visiting the museum and speaking with the director, Corrie Siegel, they realized it was an ideal place to use dance to tell the stories of the signs. “We are honored to present this work by Volta,” Siegel said. “Their sensitivity to space, history and community has anchored this project, and the stories contributed by community members provide new context for our collection. This performance brings a new level of embodiment to the stories signs and our bodies can tell.” What types of stories are being told? Examples include • Artist and Director Rachel Mason talking about the sign that guided a generation of gay men to her parents’ bookstore, Circus of Books. • Los Angeles Conservationist Celeste Hong, granddaughter of trailblazer and co-founder of LA’s Chinatown, YC Hong, sharing the history of exclusion that led to the formation of New Chinatown. • Sign historians Dydia Delyser and Eric Lynxwiler discussing the meaning of the technology of neon and what preservationists are risking to save these treasures. • Mia Kuwada, a longtime patron of Billy’s Deli, sharing about her favorite waitress. • Maryam Hosseinzadeh using a sign advertising the Pasadena Rug Mart to draw a thread from her Iranian American family to the survivors of Armenian genocide. Green and Paradowski called for stories about the signs and collected the oral histories that will make up the soundscape that the seven dancers of the Volta Collective will dance to. They asked people to record themselves speaking and gave them free range as to format and content in relation to the signs to which they are connected. “We got all sorts of information,” Green said. “There were poems people sent
“In Liquid Light” is an immersive dance concert set within the Museum of Neon Art.
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Historic signs and neon art will serve as the inspiration for the dance concert. 02.24.22 | PASADENA WEEKLY 11
