Try Leather

performance / choreography

duration 75 minutes, variable

A collaboration by Britta Wirthmüller (concept, choreography, performance), Justine A. Chambers (choreography, performance, costume), Margaret Dragu (choreography, performance, video, sound), and William Locke Wheeler (choreography, performance, set design and construction, costumes).

Welcome to the archive of the dance-performance Try Leather. Everything that you will see, hear and experience is connected to the original piece Try Leather, that Margaret Dragu first presented in Toronto in 1975. Over the course of 1.5 years Chambers, Dragu, Wheeler and Wirthmüller researched Try Leather and the historical context it originated from. Their first rehearsal period in Vancouver, Canada in March 2020 was interrupted. Since then Chambers, Dragu, Wheeler and Wirthmüller have been working remotely. Their research has taken on the form of conversation, storytelling, shared note-taking, film-making, dancing and the meticulous reconstruction of movement and text. A set of 62 hand painted banners, derived from index cards written during the first rehearsal phase, functions as a directory.

Slideshow video: Photos by Anja Weber. “Performing Memory” by Evgeny Borisenko