FLOODESIGN

It's hard to imagine two artists, two women, more dissimilar than the poet Emily Dickinson and the Spanish performance dynamo Angélica Liddell. Dickinson spent much of her life secluded in a room in her father's house in Amherst, Mass. Liddell has toured the world to great acclaim with her ferocious work, which she calls "pornography of the soul." With "Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh)," Liddell throws her sometimes naked body into a deep dive for the soul of Emily Dickinson. She uses Dickinson's repeated use of the word "bees" and her self-imposed confinement, represented by a solitary chair, as the springboards for her imaginative interpretation of the poet's tumultuous inner life. And Liddell doesn't just hint at bees; enclosed in a glass box, she joins hundreds of them onstage. Liddell's work often connects personal and physical pain with politics. If you always wanted to know what made Dickinson tick and you have a taste for fearless, world-class artistry from a brave theater maker, you need to see "Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne." ( T H I S B R I E F T R A A M E R I C A N P R E M I E R E ANGÉLICA LIDDELL ATRA BILIS TEATRO (SPAIN) "Theater, performance, installation? Like Romeo Castellucci, Angélica Liddell's productions offer a series of more or less clear paintings that weave a book of images, often holy, that recount the wound of the world."—LE TEMPS (France) A N G É L I C A L I D D E L L Photo: Isabelle Meister 58 www.peakperfs.org

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