Tickets for the performances on Saturday, November 1, and Sunday, November 2, are available at: everson.org/connect/ouroboros.
Ouroboros is an immersive performance that blends architectural installation, interactive digital media, and contemporary dance on pole. Named after the symbol of life’s cyclical nature, the 45-minute performance piece unfolds across seven chapters—pulse, diagnosis, treatment, catharsis, recovery, relapse, and pulse again—outlining moments that women face while navigating physical and psychological trauma. Coinciding with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ouroboros is inspired by Cuevas’s own journey through breast cancer survivorship.
Ouroboros is born from Cuevas’s Boghosian Fellowship at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture and will take over the Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Ceramics Center at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. Transforming an architectural colonnade into a field of theaters in the round, a grid of 36 poles will fill the gallery space— activating movement for a trio of dancers as they reclaim the historically objectified pole-dancing body as an agent of authorship, empathy, and resistance. At the Everson, Ouroboros joins a legacy of experimental installations by pioneering artists such as Yoko Ono, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Amanda Leigh Evans, and Tia Kramer.
Erin Cuevas is the school’s ninth Boghosian Fellow. Throughout the academic year, she has taught an architecture studio and two professional electives focusing on her research project, Redefining Performance, which aims to advance independent, progressive and emerging design practice, stretching architecture into adjacent artistic realms and localities, bridging disciplines and communities alike.
Credits:
- Erin Cuevas, Director and Scenographer
- Vickie Roan, Director and Choreographer
- Aika Doone, Dancer
- Angel Mammoliti, Dancer
- Kurtis Sprung, Composer
- Ziqi Wang, Interaction Design and Production
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Scott Smith, Interaction Design
- Yufan Xie, Interaction Design
- Meng Chih Hsieh, Research assistant
- CMLA, Producer
- Wahei Lam, Producer
- Megan McNally, Director of Video and Photography
Supported by:
Syracuse University’s School of Architecture, Boghosian Fellowship; Dean Michael Speaks, Everson Museum of Art; XPole; 12Twelve
