Choreography:

Some Kind of Dance(1982)

 

Evening-length solo created & performed by Skura, consisting of 9 beginnings, 6 middles, and 5 ends.

Performed at A Clear Space, Performance Space 122, & as featured event for inauguration of Franklin Furnace's then-new performance space, in New York City, and at Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia.

Video version of Part One (the beginnings) is by Alex Roshuk (RIP) & Skura. Video of Part Two (the middles) and Part Three (the ends) has been lost. Sadly.

Improvised recorded dialog in beginning by Skura & Steven Keats (RIP).

Soundtrack & piano music by Skura. The dog heard on soundtrack is Steppenwolf.

Video Version of Part One (The Beginnings)

 

"Deliciously comic...A hellzapoppin' for devotees of experimental choreography." Jack Anderson, New York Times

"Both funny and refreshingly honest." Philadlephia Inquirer

"Sheds much light on the human condition...For Skura, the creative struggle is inevitably embedded in the social struggles of everyday life...arguing with friends, explaining one's marginal existence to loving parents, doing one's own shitwork, going home alone when the performance is over...Skura shows these facets of the artist-as-ordinary-person-and-worker with a deadpan wit and appealing sincerity...Somewhere in the middle of the piece is a virtuosic outburst in voice and gesture -- an ego dance in which Skura rages, 'I am the duck! I am... the milk! I am.....!' Threaded through is some low-key movement, its understatement & serious, inward focus a pleasant contrast to the other sections...Skura is not making explicitly political art. Yet there is much in Some Kind of Dance that comments on the political situations of artists and of women, bringing it all home with a human sensibility." Sally Banes, Subversive Expectations: Performance Art and Paratheater in New York, 1976-85