---

  EVENTS

---

Residency

forwarder and forwarder and forwarder

CultureHub LA
The Reef / Maker City LA
1933 S Broadway, Suite 1128
Los Angeles, CA 90007

April 17, 2024
7pm PST
In-Person
Free / Donate

RSVP

Join physical theater artist Anthony Nikolchev and team in conversation with Stacy Dawson Stearns as they screen work-in-progress performance film footage and share the creative process of their 3-week developmental period at CultureHub LA to develop their new work: The (un)double. Spawning from Dostoevsky's The Double, The (un)double dissects and examines the space between the self and the ideal and exposes the role that narrative plays in society. Primarily concerned with movement, text, sound and video design, Nikolchev and his creative team used their residency to develop a meaningful dialogue between the technical design and physical performance processes.

This public event offers an honest look into the way a team of collaborators made use of a technical development residency, and how the innovative design aspects informed, shifted, and collided with the subject matter. Because Anthony and Stacy have a history of working together as physical performance instructors at CalArts, the audience can anticipate a conversation that delves into the experiential relationship between the body and technology, the inevitability of complications, and the revelations they induce within processes.

---

More about The (un)double:
Created by Anthony Nikolchev for he and his partner Gema Galiana’s company The Useless Room, The (un)double is a new performance which spawns from Dostoevsky's The Double as a foundational concept. The (un)double operates as theatrical faux narrative therapy, psychiatric intake evaluation, dance/movement, audiovisual hallucination and literary adaptation. Focusing on several real-life icons of “doubleness,” including the politician and war criminal Radovan Karadzic and the concepts of “wellness” Karadzic embodied post-war as he hid in the identity of the energy healer Dragan David Dabic. Karadzic’s direct impact on further terrifying doubles of today, particularly internet-driven image-insecurities and the rise of anomie in white male supremacists craving attention (specifically in the case of Brenton Tarrant - the mass shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, who revered Radovan Karadzic during his horrendous live-feed) prompts the question: why is this double narrative taking hold as an increasingly destructive force in society these days, and is there a point where it can be rerouted?

The performance features a duet of movement devised and choreographed by Lukasz Przytarski (recent credits include the world-touring Transverse Orientation by Dimitris Papaioannou) and Anthony Nikolchev, along with text adapted from Dostoevsky’s novella and original writings by Anthony Nikolchev, and an integration of several interviews between Nikolchev an anonymous collaborator on the subject of the double and process of creating an “other,” the desire towards one’s own narrative, and the dangers therein.

Photo courtesy of the artist.