Kimmy Quillin has long been searching for a way to unite her painting practice with a live performance of dancerly movement incorporating the talents of professional dance and music makers. To widen the circle of expertise involved in the project, she recruited professional dancer and CEO of Good Move Jules Bakshi, and Kirk Schoenherr, professional guitarist and music producer. The resulting body of work is a six-part series of paintings which inform a live presentation including dance and site-specific soundtrack.

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Quillin's OAX paintings invoke motion and repetition. The six paintings can be broken into two series-- Red and Tan. Each series contains three parallel stages-- figurative line, spontaneous abstraction and geometric abstraction-- which interpret two poses taken from live dance performances. The colors are informed by natural pigments of flor de jamaica (Hibiscus sabdariffa), cascara sagrada (Rhamnus purshiana) and pericón (Tagetes lucida). Witnessing the traditional dye methods practiced by the Porfirio Gutiérrez family of Teotitlán del Valle encouraged Quillin to begin experimenting with natural coloration in her work. 

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In its first iteration in February 2020, the painting+performance took place in the courtyard of the Pocoapoco artists’ residency (Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico). Paintings literally incorporated movement as they hung along a clothesline, allowing them to gently swing in the breeze. The dance begins without advance warning to the audience, as Bakshi and Quillin enter the area in front of the paintings, synching movement in an imaginary clean up of the dance space. A soundtrack by Schoenherr of recorded sounds from everyday Oaxacan life emerges and leads the movement through its course, returning to end again with a final clean up of the space.

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This marks the first collaboration between Bakshi and Quillin and the second time working together for Bakshi and Schoenherr (Subtle Details Dance Theater presented “Nest” in 2017). The trio intends to expand the collaboration upon their return to New York and to present again in Spring/Summer 2020.