Sticks
&
Stone
Sticks & Stone is an ongoing collaboration between interdisciplinary artists Nicki Miller and Benny Oyzon.
We specialize in integrating aerial rigging into the choreography and dramaturgy of interdisciplinary performance. We highlight the interpersonal relationship dynamics created in counterweight rigging dynamics to tell tender stories of human-to-human relations in works like Sticks & Stone and “Feedback Loop.”
Sometimes our work explores ecodramaturgical approaches to aerial rigging and choreography that give the physical world as much narrative agency as the humans inhabiting it, like in “The Great Turning” at the O+ Festival, and the upcoming Arboreal.
Our show titled Sticks & Stone is the culmination of artistic research we developed between 2019-2022. This project uses elements of aerial dance, puppetry, physical theatre, and poetry as two characters confront the dissociation of mind and body perpetuated by ill-fitting identity constructs, social obligations, and cultural expectations. The show asks
what do we do when our bodies become strangers to our souls?
The poetry of physics…
… or the physics of poetry?
“According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way around.” - Gary Zukov