11 minutes, 20 seconds

“Plastic Harvest” is a Covid-era dance film that explores the omnipresence of plastic. The film continues the ongoing collaboration between choreographer Jody Sperling and composer Matthew Burtner, both acclaimed for their creative engagement with environmental issues. Ironically, while plastic is a proliferating pollutant, it is also something we all share that connects us across virtual spaces—we wear it, we bathe in it, we even breathe it. How we live in plastic tells us about who we are.

In Covid’s wake, Sperling began rehearsing remotely with the dancers of her company who were dispersed geographically. Each dancer fashioned a unique plastic costume and investigated a different relationship to the material. Anika Hunter luxuriates in a bathtub filled with plastic bags. Maki Kitahara glides ghostlike in a plastic-bag kimono in a church sanctuary. Sporting a plastic tutu emblazoned with yellow-smiley face, Andrea Trager frolics amid traffic on a busy avenue while her remote partner, Frances Barker, sports a red target on her back on an empty suburban street.

DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHY: Jody Sperling
MUSIC: Matthew Burtner
PERFORMERS: Frances Barker, Anika Hunter, Maki Kitahara, Andrea Trager

Plastic Harvest was created in part during a 2020 artist residency at The Center at West Park and with support from Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Relief Fund.