Ouroboros

The Paul Phillips and Sharon Sullivan Ceramics Center will soon transform into a site for storytelling through an innovative public performance titled Ouroboros that blurs the boundaries between architectural intervention and performance.

Directed by architect and scenographer Erin Cuevas, Ouroboros reimagines the traditional architectural feature of a colonnade as a stage. A series of 36 poles will be installed in the gallery space for dancers to interact with throughout chapters of the performance. Named after the symbol of life’s cyclical nature, Ouroboros is told through a series of seven chapters — pulse, diagnosis, treatment, catharsis, recovery, relapse, and pulse again — that outline key moments many women face when undergoing physical or psychological trauma.

Ouroboros presents this cycle through a mixture of contemporary pole dance and scenographic interventions, using rotating turntables and everyday tools like projectors, flashlights, and laser levels to create a dynamic combination of video and light projections. The performance reclaims the historically objectified pole-dancing body as a force of spatial authorship, empathy, and resistance.

Cuevas is partnering with emerging choreographer and movement artist Vickie Roan, whose work pushes the boundaries of contemporary dance. The score is composed by Kurtis Sprung, whose compositions range from classically inspired concertos to dreamy, otherworldly soundscapes.