Giffen Good | Ok Trombone | David Whitwell's Visual Album
Choreography & Performance by Orlando Hunter
Directed by Paul A. Notice II & Jim Costanzo
Music by David Whitwell
Buy the Ok Trombon album here
For Video Production Rates & Inquiries, Email: Paul@thenoticeblog.com
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
Imagine a product that people consume more of as the price rises - and vice versa. Imagine something that violates the basic law of demand in microeconomics.
That’s a Giffen good.
My co-director on this piece, Jim Costanzo, suggested we do something on Wall Street and Time Square: 2 centers of capitalism. All we needed was a skilled & highly adaptive Dancer who could embody the everyday person trapped in this world of consumerism and superficial valuations. I suggested the uncanny Orlando Hunter, a stunning performer & choreographer I met back in 2017 at one of Kelly Thomas’ Black Arts Retreat getaways. And everyone agreed.
But we had no idea just how much brilliance they would bring to set that day. Having a Black body infiltrate spaces of Whiteness and Commerce, not meekly - but unapologetically - changed this entire piece for the better. We became starkly aware that both Orlando and I were once - and in some respects still - considered a Giffen good. The performance transformed into a defiant act in the face of statues of YT men long dead, who once sold us on the steps of Wall Street. To create a certain intimacy with what they’re experiencing, I would orbit the camera around Orlando’s face, as they looked up into the Time Square lights or the cold grey stone of the New York Stock exchange.
Side note: In order to raise money for the cost of “importing” enslaved people, The New York Stock issued securities for the “shipments.” We were literal property in this country and treated as such. In light of the recent insurrection at the Capitol, I ask this: How could we expect such a way of life and thought-process to go silently into the night with Emancipation? With Reconstruction? With the Civil Rights Era? With a historic turnout for Black voters in Georgia? White Supremacy won’t go away in a moment or event. Its roots are long, and its end requires the effort of generations - and time.
#oktrombone #moderndance #blackchoreographers #blackartists #blackdirectors #timessquare #preCOVID #WallStreet #NYSE #DancersofInstagram #Experimental #new #trendingdance #abstractdance #directors #indiefilms