The Sky Hangs Down Too Close

Premiered: The Galaxie, 2008

“What moves you?” This is the guiding question behind Lucky Plush Productions’The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, a work created by Associate Director Peter Carpenter. Conceived in response to the themes of conflict and desire in Bertolt Brecht’s stark drama, In the Jungle of Cities (1924), this darkly satirical dance-theatre work reckons with the seductive and powerful forces that move us everyday. In The Sky Hangs Down Too Close, Carpenter develops arresting images that recall-often comically-the bizarre and shifting ways in which power articulates itself in both public and private interactions. Creating the work in collaboration with a cast of seven veteran ensemble members, Carpenter focuses on the concept of “unmotivated struggle”-a key theme for Brecht-as a way to understand the ways in which we move and are moved. In this, the piece critiques patterns within the social world and simultaneously recognizes the physical labor and symbolic potency of the dancing body.