Adam Rose

Photo by Eric Futran. Via Chicago Reader.

A few weeks ago, I came across the above photo of Adam Rose in the Chicago Reader. For those of you who don't know, Adam is a very talented choreographer who runs the Chicago-based Antibody Corporation, which co-produced the video with Glen Jennings that I wrote about in March, entitled "Social Dance Experiment."


Here's what Laura Molzahn at the Reader had to say about him:


"Fear is very magical in a way, because it's an altered state of consciousness," he says. "In a prolonged state of fear, we tend to imagine things that are not there. I'm interested in exploring the negative emotions in general, like anger, hatred, rage, pain, sadness. All the negative emotions have a mutating effect. The longer you stay in them, the less human you become."

Rose, 28, speaks haltingly but articulately; a self-described shy young man, he's transformed onstage. About half the time he performs as a woman. Pretty much all the time his movements are contorted, transfiguring his face into a mask of rage or grief and his limbs into agents of violence, sometimes directed at himself or, more rarely, someone else. "To me the point of performing is to throw myself outside of my self," he says, "or to find other selves besides my supposed self-identity."

There's a method to Rose's madness. It's not about shock value, or at least not completely. He's well versed in certain arcane matters; the U.S. military's 20-year experiment in parapsychology drove his IAR 93 Vultur last January. Trained in music, he creates his own sound designs. And he seems to take a principled approach to his work. On the website for his company—originally Antibody Dance, now Antibody Corporation—he writes that he wants to "examine the sicknesses produced by civilization and activate an immune response." He's absolutely invested in everything he does, and mesmerizing to watch.


Read the full article.

"Social Dance Experiment" is the third part of a cycle called "elena (or the misfortunes of the virtual)."