Daphne and Apollo: Exercise One

Photo courtesy of the artist

“Juliana Francis Kelly embodies (the) vision of woman as blank-faced mannequin-whore.”
Orange County Register

In Ovid’s Daphne and Apollo, Daphne, the fastest nymph in the forest, can’t outrun a creepy God. She prays for deliverance, and gets it when she is turned into a tree. Through extreme dance inspired by a female tri-athletes and a 14 year old track star, along with text drawn from interviews with teenaged girls, and weird facts about the history of Bernini’s statue “Daphne and Apollo”, “…. Exercise One” aims to get to the heart of the conditions that inspired Ovid’s great line: “Change the body that destroys my life.”

Artists Involved: Written and directed by Juliana Francis-Kelly; sound design by Raul Vincent Enriquez; additional text by Danica, Tenaj and Zenzali Lael

Lead Artist: JULIANA FRANCIS KELLY has originated roles for many great writer/directors, including Reza Abdoh (as a founding member of the internationally renowned Dar A Luz Company); Richard Foreman (Paradise Hotel; Bad Boy Nietzsche; King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe and Maria Del Bosco – for which she received an OBIE Award) and for Anne Bogart, Karin Coonrod, Young Jean Lee, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Lear DeBessonet, Normandy Sherwood, Hal Hartley, Meredith Drum, Mary Billyou, Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin, and David Michalek (for the 2011 Lincoln Center Festival’s Portraits in Dramatic Time).  Ms. Kelly also writes, performs and directs her own work, and has written for several film companies, including Killer Films. Her plays include: Go Go Go, directed by Anne Bogart for PS 122, reprised at The Institute of Contemporary Art for London International Festival of Theater; Box, directed by Tony Torn and performed at The Women’s Project, PS 122; and The Fontanon Festival in Italy; The Baddest Natashas, performed at The Ontological Theater and published by Open City Magazine; “Saint Latrice”, at PS 122 (for which she received a Sundance Screenwriters Fellowship for the film script adaptation.) Recent performances include Woman Bomb by Ivana Sajko, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite at Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Tiny Hornets by Normandy Sherwood at Uncanny Valley. Ms. Kelly is also a doll maker (one of her dolls is installed at the American Museum of Natural History’s Interactive Educational Wing) and a Mom.