Miklavcic Art & Media
Home

Elizabeth Miklavcic

About

Exhibitions

Contact

Chrysalis Exhibition & Residency, SLC, UT February 7 - 28, 1986

Elizabeth Miklavcic Photograph by John Brandon

A Chrysalis Project
A Chrysalis Project was installed and performed at the Salt Lake Art Center, (now the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art-UMOCA) for the February 7, 1986 grand opening reception of James Pridgeon's The Big Picture. The installation ran in the gallery, Elizabeth gave a talk about the creation of the work, and she gave four performances on varying days and times throughout the month of February.


A Chrysalis Project

Click the thumbnail for a larger image.

A Chrysalis Project Exhibit & Residency
Elizabeth Miklavcic had a specific idea for an environment that defined the world of the dancer. Elizabeth and Jimmy Miklavcic designed the look of the installation together, and Jimmy built a substantial set out of beautiful wood and industrial pipe for the frame where the hanging curtains could stand alone. The set innately defined a space, this space was where the dancer was confined.

There were three stages of curtains made out of red, blue, and lavender colored sheets of plastic, cut into strips. Similar to colored gels used for theater lighting, the idea was that the colors of the plastic would combine together as light shone through to create more colors. In the back of the set was a stool where the dance began. The stool represented a starting place, a platform, so-to-speak, a place of safety.

Choreographically, the dancer begins to tentatively travel away from the safety that the stool represents. The dancer engages with the hanging curtains, emboldened she becomes more and more motional. Just when you think she is going to break free from her self-imposed framework, she takes a step back, and only peers through the most downstage curtain. She looks out to the world beyond, but does not engage with it, holding back.