Close Proximity
Created by Marco Pinter and Ava Ansari.
Performed by Ava Ansari and Marco Pinter.


In this piece, the audience intimately shares the visual and tactile sensations of the performer to create an experience which is sensual, disturbing and at times darkly comedic. The dancer begins by exploring herself, and this process is intimately shared with the audience. She has two live cameras, the first of which is her "third eye", positioned on her forehead, and the second of which is her "hand eye", held in her right hand. The live feed from these two cameras is mixed and projected behind the stage at discomforting magnification. She studies her features and her skin, at times scratching herself and watching the line on her skin turn white and fade back to flesh color; all this magnified and projected at 15 feet across to the audience. The live dissolve between the two camera feeds creates a cubist perceptual effect of seeing the face or body part simultaneously from two angles. Finishing her self exploration, she becomes aware of the male "victim" sitting across the stage. She approaches him, explores him, probes him, scratches him. The process becomes increasingly absurd and disturbing as she switches from her fingernails to a hairpin to finally the blade of a scissors, tracing his open eye, while casually humming along to the soundtrack of The Girl from Ipanema. Finally she transfers her eyes to him and walks off stage, leaving the audience to follow her movement, through his perspective, as she fades into the darkness.