“Philly isn't a cute, pretty city, so why make work that is?” —Kate Watson-Wallace, director of STORE

“Wild imagination ruled.” —The New York Times

Chronicling the inner life of the American consumer and performed inside in an abandoned megastore, STORE is inspired by how and why we buy. It imagines what our world would be like if we only had the rules left and everything else were gone, except for the leftovers, the wreckage of our excess. What will our bodies do in a world where the product no more but the rules—detest, discover, purchase, apply, empty, repeat—still apply?

Part performance art, part dance party, part replication of the shopping experience, STORE is the third work in the American Spaces Trilogy (HOUSE, 2006; CAR, 2008). Audiences surround the set of an absurdist infomercial that's being shot for a shopping network. On screens throughout the store a shopping-lady avatar gives guidance on products and protocol. A set built of thousands of clothes morphs throughout the show, from vast garbage-like piles to neatly stacked walls to outfits for the audience to wear. A society continues the rituals of a world that no longer exists.

Kate Watson-Wallace, a Philadelphia-based choreographer and performer, is the director of anonymous bodies, an interdisciplinary performance company that creates site-based performances that re-imagine everyday spaces.

“Kate Watson-Wallace and her anonymous bodies group . . . continue to push performance into the unexpected settings that reveal that all of life is a stage for performers.” —Broad Street Review

Direction and Choreography: Kate Watson-Wallace Co-direction and Text: Brian Osborne Video Installation: Ricardo Rivera Composer and Sound Design: Josh Cicetti Dramaturg: Sebastienne Mundheim Costume Design: Millie Hiibel Set design: Steven Dufala Performers: Charlotte Ford (on film), Makoto Hirano, Jaamil Kosoko, Lorin Lyle, John Luna, Heather Murphy, Kate Watson-Wallace

Special thanks to Avi Eden and The Judith S. Eden Small Theater Initiative.

Portions of this show require the audience to move about the venue.

Executive Producer: Malin VanAntwerp

Read blog articles about this show by clicking here.

Kate Watson-Wallace (choreographer, dancer) creates site-based performances that re-imagine everyday spaces. Her work choreographs spectator as well as performer, taking audiences on intimate, human-scale journeys through a row house, a parking lot, and a dance club, where they meet the human body up close. She is a 2007 Pew Fellow in the Arts in Choreography. The Rockefeller Map Fund, Dance Advance, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Independence Foundation have all funded her work. She is also appearing in more., Headlong Dance Theater's 2009 Live Arts show. Other performance credits include Myra Bazell (2000–06) and Group Motion Company (1998–2002).

Makoto Hirano (dancer) is a Philadelphia-based, multidisciplinary performance artist and founder of the ensemble OMNiBUS. Performer/collaborator credits include: Love Unpunished and Pay Up (Pig Iron Theatre Company); The Happiness Lecture (Bill Irwin and Philadelphia Theatre Company); Wandering Alice (Nichole Canuso Dance Company) and CAR (Kate Watson-Wallace/anonymous bodies). Hirano's latest solo project, Boom Bap Tourism, is set to premiere in fall 2009. He is a former U.S. Marine, and studied dance at Columbia College Chicago before earning his BFA at Temple University.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (dancer) is an interdisciplinary movement-based artist. He has appeared in the works of Ann Carlson, Yoshiko Chuma, Terry Creach, Lisa Kraus, Helen Lesterlin, Richard Siegal, Kate Watson-Wallace, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Headlong Dance Theater, Leah Stein Dance Company, Emergent Improvisation Ensemble, and Faustin Linyekula and Les Studios Kabako (The Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). He has shown his dances and dance films at Bennington College, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival, Danspace at St. Mark's Church, and Joyce SoHo. Kosoko partnered with Melanie Stewart Dance and the 2008-2009 nEW Festival as a resident artist. www.kosokoperformance.org

John Luna (dancer) is a Philly-based freelance dancer/choreographer and a native of Texas. When he isn't wiggling around on stage, Luna enjoys experimenting with video editing and projection, reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, and playing video games. John would like to thank his family for always supporting his endeavors.

Heather Murphy (dancer) has performed and created dances in Philly since 1996, and has toured the U.S. and internationally. She was a cofounder of Moxie Dance Collective (1999-2004), is a former company member of Group Motion Company (1999-2002), and has also worked with Headlong Dance Theater for 12 years. In addition, she performs with Nichole Canuso Dance Company and Kate Watson-Wallace's anonymous bodies. Murphy is the creator of Baby Loves Disco (www.babylovesdisco.com), a dance party for kids and their parents, and is mama to a six-year-old monkey boy named Max and a two-year-old bunny girl named Isadora. Her husband Mark is an architect and a musician in the jazz trio Big Truck.

Ricardo Rivera (video installation) began experimenting with video in 1998 as a live video performer (VJ Kaboom) and installation artist. Today, he is the founder and principal of klip//collective, a group dedicated to creating high-end, large-scale, site-specific installations. His work varies from permanent commissions to one-night music events. He has permanent installations in W Hotels across the country, Crobar Club (NYC), Sonar Lounge (Baltimore), China Grille (Chicago), and Electric Factory (Philadelphia), among others. He has done temporary installations at The Philadelphia Museum of Art in a tribute to Salvador Dali and at the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia, in the group show Temporary Cities. www.klip.tv

Josh Cicetti (composer/sound designer) is a composer who has played with several Philly bands. He has toured the U.S. and U.K. with Heartache Disease, Lucky #13, and God Like Diablo, and has opened up for Interpol, the Fall, and the Liars. He has composed music for kate watson-wallace/anonymous bodies and SCRAP Performance Group. He is currently writing and performing for two new projects—Pink Pix and Dead Churches—and continuing his collaboration with Kate Watson-Wallace. He also plays with the Philly band Gildon Works.

Millie Hiibel (costume designer) designed costumes for anonymous bodies' CAR (2008 Live Arts Festival). A Philadelphia-based designer with regional and off-Broadway credits, Hiibel worked on the Philadelphia premiere of Edward Albee’s At Home At The Zoo at the Philadelphia Theater Company and Spooky Action for Miro Dance Theatre. She received 2004 and 2007 Barrymore nominations for costume design in Comedy of Errors and La Ronde (both Lantern Theatre), and was a 2007 F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist finalist. A 2005 Independence Foundation Fellowship took Hiibel to Prague to study traditional marionettes. Millie teaches at Temple University, the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art and Design.

Sebastienne Mundheim (dramaturge) has created 18 original performance works commissioned by University of Pennsylvania, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, and others. Mundheim’s A Potable Joyce: a Watered-Down Version of Ulysses toured Ireland in 2004, and was made into a film. Her Currently Franklin: The Story of a Paper Boy was performed over 100 times in 2006. Her newest work Sea of Birds toured New England in 2009. Mundheim has collaborated with New Paradise Laboratories, Thaddeus Phillips, Lucidity Suitcase, Madi DiStefano, Brat Productions, and the Reactionaries.