Our bodies’ relationship to power infuses our language. We have an “appetite” for power. We “hunger” and “thirst” for it. We “chase” power. For her sumptuous new dance theater work, choreographer Carrie Hanson invited playwright Stuart Flack to collaborate with her dynamo dancers and design team—a first for The Seldoms—to take these linguistic cues in order to investigate how we understand and deploy power.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson certainly hungered for power—and knew how to wield it. Reading Robert Caro’s biographies of LBJ, inspired Hanson to create this work, recognizing that effective governance relies on successful performances—both public and private. Such displays of power established LBJ’s political career and helped push forward transformative legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Medicare Bill. In Power Goes, Hanson uses the figure of LBJ as a lens to view power more broadly and to ask if the robust political might that LBJ embodied can even be possible in the United States today.

Set off by current political gridlock, Hanson’s astute study of power—how it is acquired, taken, wielded; how it is expressed by the body; how it can be deployed for progressive action or conversely create gridlock—is a breakthrough in dance and theater collaboration. Hanson created the work with the playwright, The Seldoms dancers, visual artist Sarah Krepp, designer Bob Faust, sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, costume designer Jeffrey Hancock, lighting designer Julie Ballard, and historian Michael J. Kramer.

The Seldoms developed Power Goes in part through the MCA Stage New Works Initiative, which provides commissioning support and a production design residency. The New Works Initiative was established in 2014 and meaningfully expands MCA Stage’s ongoing commitment to supporting artists and bringing important new performances to our audiences. Learn more

Running time: 75 minutes

Sun, Mar 22 and 29, 3 pm

These performances of Power Goes are American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreted Performances.

Artists Up Close

MCA Studio The Seldoms, Open Doors
– THU, MAR 19, 2015, 2–4 pm
– Museum visitors are invited to come and go from the theater to observe the artists working on the production Power Goes.

MCA Talk
– FRI, MAR 20 and 27, postshow
– Audience members are invited to stay at the end of the performance for a conversation with Carrie Hanson and collaborators, moderated by Peter Taub and Yolanda Cesta Cursach.

MCA Talk: The Seldoms, Bodies on the Line
– SAT, MAR 28, 2015, 1–3 pm

Choreographer Carrie Hanson’s Power Goes is inspired by the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, who once remarked how power is where power goes. She discusses the theme of power with an all-star panel that includes Mark K. Updegrove (Director of the LBJ Presidential Library), Michael C. Dawson (founding director of the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture), and S. Elise Archias (Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and author of the upcoming book The Concrete Body – Rainer, Schneemann, Acconci).