Dance artist, Maree ReMalia (PA), lens-based visual artist, Gigi Gatewood (NY), and performer Lillian Cho (DC) collaborate to create a new, multidisciplinary project, A Letter Compiled from All Letters. The artists merge live performance and video works incorporating movement, sound, text, and storytelling. In this pilot phase, they work with Pittsburgh-based artists such as David Bernabo, Moriah Ella Mason, and Jil Stifel to include stories from letters contributed by individuals from the local community and beyond. Linking people across time and location through letter writing and today’s technological tools, the artists shed light on what can not be said in a text or a tweet by asking contributors to recall significant moments and untold stories from their lives. The stories weave their way into live movement scenes and video projection; they are collapsed together, excerpted, told by new voices, developed like a call and response, or used to generate movement, mood, or scene. By including a range of voices, the artists aim to bring varied forms of narrative to the body and use video imagery to magnify what is meaningful about our experiences.

Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Fresh Works creative residency program, provides artists with space to research, explore and play, as well as offering production support to develop and present new works-in-progress. Maree ReMalia | merrygogo begins the first phase of development on their latest work during November 2017.