Everything Must Go (2023)

Choreographed and Performed by Tess Dworman

Co-performed by Sonya Gadet-Molansky and Ned Riseley

Lighting Design by Shana Crawford

Originally performed at Pageant in November 2023

All images by Amelia Golden

Everything Must Go is a dance theater work that emerges from satirical questioning into the consumption of experimental performance. It examines the ways in which capitalism provokes a savior complex in artists, urging us to demonstrate goodness amidst crisis.

My investigation into persona and the solo improvisational form continues with this stark inhabitation of character and an inventory of feeling inside the power play between performer and audience. A teacher becomes a life coach becomes The Artist becomes your mom. The work lays bare the tangential renewal of live performance.

“This choreographer and dancer is a shape-shifter with a biting wit. She inhabits other people as if she were flipping through sketches and bringing them to life.”
— Gia Kourlas, New York Times