Coverture (2021)

Devised by Tess Dworman

Performers: Tess Dworman, Miguel Gutierrez, John Maria Gutierrez, Martita Abril

Dramaturge: Angie Pittman

Photos by Paula Court

Coverture is a series of conversations and improvised performances devised by choreographer Tess Dworman. Each night of the three-night run, Dworman performed a duet with a different guest artist: John Maria Gutierrez, Miguel Gutierrez, and Martita Abril.

The pairs lipsynched to a recording of a conversation they previously had, and performed movement prompted from conversational threads.

The origin of these conversations and improvisational scores is rooted in the tragic death of Cuban-American painter, video-artist, sculptor, and performance artist, Ana Mendieta, who allegedly fell out of her Greenwich Village apartment window in 1985 during an argument with her husband, Carl Andre, an American icon of Minimalist art.

Andre was acquitted for second-degree murder, and the story lives on as a Downtown art scene scandal, mostly through endless op-eds and mythology passed on through gossip.

The dubbed performance of these conversations creates a meeting point of multiple locations and times as the performers navigate the memory of a dialogue that unpacks the memory of a historical event.