The Very Unlikeliness (I'm Going to KILL You!) [again&again version] choreography + sound by Chris Yon
performed by Taryn Griggs + Chris Yon
costumes by Sara Smith
La MaMa E.T.C. (NYC) June 14-16, 2013
Bryant Lake Bowl (MPLS) June 21-23 + 29-30, 2013
made possible with funds from the Jerome Foundation and a residency at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center supported in part by The McKnight Foundation in partnership with Northrop Concerts and Lectures.
Yon and Griggs place themselves squarely in the tradition of husband-and-wife vaudeville teams who spent years on the road perfecting their act. Watch them interact with droll humor and deadpan slapstick as they create an entire world constructed from precisely splintered images — a kinetic Joseph Cornell box — on the tiny Bryant-Lake Bowl stage. Linda Shapiro, CIty Pages
Mr. Yon calls this iteration of “The Very Unlikeliness” the “again & again version,” and it does have an endless quality. It’s 45 minutes from a dance that might continue forever or until the two do each other in. Brian Seibert, New York Times
Watching real-life couple Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs dance their astonishingly precise pas de deux is like reading hieroglyphics. It’s all about gesture – a myriad of gestures, quick, sharp movements, and moments when the two are nose-to-nose (in tenderness or warning?). Their stoic, almost expressionless faces, the costumes (black with white piping), the mysterious title, and the soundtrack (a combination of pop music, noise, what might be giant balloons being squeezed, and a lesson in touch typing) come together in a 45-minute piece that’s over too soon. Pamela Espeland, MinnPost
...a smart piece of dancing that surprises with wry bits of humor, mastery of accumulated movement, and sharp-edged choreography. Caroline Palmer, Star Tribune
Radio piece by Todd Melby for KFAI
“You will be disturbed, amused, confused,” writes Lightsey Darst of Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs’ new dance work. “You will suffer moments of enlightenment without content; you will surprise yourself by thinking five thoughts at once." FULL ARTICLE
But the best way to see abstract dance is to see it again. The first time I saw Yon's Unlikeliness, I liked it, but this time I thought it was a smash, a nuclear meltdown, an orchestra in itself. Lightsey Darst, mnartists.org
BELOW: Poster by David Bagnall AND Unlikely Shorts camera & graphics by David Bagnall edited by Chris Yon and David Bagnall
