The Seed and the Soil

Performance dates: The Program I performances run January 30, 31 and February 6, 13, 20, 21. Please note there is both a morning and evening performance on February 21 date.

The piece titled "The Seed and the Soil" is an original collaboration between Sasha Janes, Choreographer and Associate artistic Director of Charlotte Ballet, and artist Frank Selby. The narrative that structures the performance is a Cold-War era CIA mind control operation known as Project MKUltra. From the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s the CIA operated a large-scale body of experiments, often ethically and morally problematic, in order to observe the behaviors of people subjected to significant doses of psychoactive drugs. Subjects were held, observed, and recorded, frequently under duress. While purported as a component of the USA's weapons race against the USSR, the project became something that resembled the very forces it claimed to be against.

Frank Selby's practice deals with the systematic distortions of communication. The idea for this project grew out of a fascination with the role played by language in defining the individual self in relation to a larger social consciousness.  Language seems to function as a sort of connective tissue between the self and the culture, but always in a state of fluidity or plasticity, especially in a culture as saturated with communication as ours.  One way to question where those boundaries may exist is through specific mental states of subjects, such as dreams, mental illness, and drug use. Project MKUltra is an example of the state attempting to do just that, and encountering a material problem: an observation could only be of the subject's behavior, the actual mental experience cannot be known by anybody but the subject.

This collaboration grew out of a fascination with how language assists in defining the individual self in relation to a larger social consciousness, and the fluidity of communication within an information-saturated culture. The work, choreographed by Sasha Janes and performed by Charlotte Ballet dancers, enacts the complicated and elaborate progression of the experience and its observation, featuring a demanding mix of rehearsed movement and improvisation. From playful and exuberance to chaotic and anxious, the ballet evokes the possibility of bringing to life something that is both beautiful and fearful, majestic and dangerous, able to inspire awe and provoke thought without ever being truly known.

The Seed and the Soil is a part of the Charlotte Ballet's Innovative Works series, and a result of Frank Selby's residency at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation.