Around This Body of Mine
Attorno a questo mio corpo 

Museo d'Arte della città di Ravenna
Museum of Art of Ravenna, Italy

December 2025 & February 2026

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Part One: performed by Saba Shabbir and Fred Brown 
Part Two: performed by Gemma Hannson Carbone & Marcia Mastromarino 

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First developed during the pandemic as a commission from The Chelsea Music Festival (NYC, 2022), VanDyke's performance investigates conditions of togetherness. It explores the power dynamics that might unfold between intimates over the course of a few hours or an entire life. VanDyke notes: "We learned to relate differently during the pandemic, many of us 'together' more than ever before, and many of us sustaining loneliness and loss, all while asking vital questions about belonging and inclusion. How do we remain deeply present to one another, in real time and space? How do we find each other, again, through periods of dissonance?"
 

In December of 2025, the two performers from the US (who debuted the piece in 2022) traveled to Ravenna and performed the piece at the opening of VanDyke's site-specific installation. In turn, these two performers "transmitted" the performance elements as a "living score" to two Italians: the work moves across borders and from body to body. Each iteration of the piece accrues new elements, based on site and context. These elements are archived and added to the score so that they may appear again.

For the three hours of the performance, the two performers move in and around Van Dyke's immersive installation of paintings and sculptures, making sounds in response to one another, using only their voices, bodies, and what they find in the gallery space. Instructed not to use language, the performers manifest possibilities for communicating abstractly and beyond the spoken word.
 
VanDyke's performance score defines qualities that the performers learn to embody in an intensive series of rehearsals, and then improvise from continuously over the course of three hours. VanDyke notes that he chooses "this intentionally long duration as a way to exhaust one's initial gestures and move into a realm of the unknown." Not unlike a musical score, VanDyke's performance score includes such qualities as tempo and volume, while also defining a range of movement and relational qualities–such as interrupting one another, mirroring each other, and turning away from one another. The performance compels audience members, who may come and go as they please, and may stay as long as they wish, to imagine how two people might build, take apart, and re-build a relationship, especially within this period of global turmoil and constant distraction.
 
VanDyke notes that, "This performance 'troubles' patriarchal conventions around such qualities as dominance and submission, because the two performers exhibit manners and behaviors that unfold across a constantly shifting spectrum of possibilities, never settling into binaries." 
 
Long invested in multidisciplinary practice as both an internationally recognized artist and teacher, VanDyke began collaborating with actors and dancers in 2006. This piece marked his first foray into sound.

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Photos: Roberto Ana & Jonathan VanDyke

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