Holland Andrews & yuniya edi kwon: How Does It Feel to Look at Nothing

Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon bring How does it feel to look at nothing to On The Boards starting Thursday, October 15, with performances running through October 17. It's an interdisciplinary piece that pulls together composition, improvisation, dance, and ritual, and it's built from an improvised language of disintegration.

They describe the work as an embodied pre-origin story of a Deity of Nothingness—an opera of the elemental, of pre-deities and illusions of containment, that unfolds through a story of transitional states. It's a high-concept premise, but the actual performance is grounded in the physical: dance and ritual working alongside the music. The two of them are composer-performers, multi-instrumentalists, and vocalists, and they co-create the piece together, drawing on their shared spiritual lineages and their lives as partners. From there, they explore the forces and conditions that compel life's emergence and the spiritual act of meaning-making during epochs of decay.

Because it's built on improvisation, the piece is as much about the act of making as it is about the finished result. The dance and the music aren't separate tracks running side by side; they're woven into the same language of disintegration they describe. If you're into work that sits at the intersection of sound and movement, this is exactly that kind of thing.

Shows start at 7:30 PM, and the run goes through October 17 at On The Boards, 100 West Roy St. Tickets are $24.50 to $44.50.