Excited to soon announce our co-producing partner for Queerskins: ark VR. Truly amazed by their support of ground-breaking, emotionally complex storytelling in VR. Although a continuation of these stories, episode 2,  Queerskins Ark is designed to be a stand-alone piece as well. In this episode, Mary-Helen, Sebastian’s mother finds his diary while putting away things from a box of belongings shipped back with his body to Missouri. Reading it, not without some misgivings, she allows herself to imagine him alive and in love.  It is our intent to use the special affordances of VR to create new forms of intimacy, connection and understanding through our storytelling. We do not tell you how to feel about two male lovers’ intimate dance, but whatever you decide, however you move, coming close or staying at a distance, will influence how the dance appears. It is, in essence, a kind of collaborative choreography. We are so pleased to be working with Brandon Powers who created the dance based on Sebastian’s diary entries that I wrote 2007-2013 and dancer/actors Michael DeBartolo and Christopher Vo.

Here is a link to Michael speaking the text. https://soundcloud.com/illya-szilak/i-could-die-here associated with the segment of dance above.

“…I awoke with a feeling of expansive contentment, as if I were awash in a warm ocean. I felt dissolved—as if that light had worked on me, burnishing the surfaces so they glowed. I felt that even if I strove to see, I would not discern where my glimmering body stopped and the atmosphere ceased. To be–so uncontained, to not have to worry about the edges of things—what is this but the definition of “joy?”