Shadow Tender
Premiere: Scenofest, WSD 2017, Taipei, Taiwan - July 2017
US Premiere: Liber II, The Butoh College 2019: Performance Series, The Headwaters Theatre, Portland, Oregon - April 2019
Shadow Tender is a performance project that combines physical theatre and wearable sculpture to externalize the parts of ourselves we fear and repress in order to engage a dialogue and promote individual and social healing.
Carl Jung described the Shadow as the aspect of the psyche in which we store those parts of ourselves that we do not wish to acknowledge - things that make us feel ashamed, frightened, weak, or powerless. In rejecting our own Shadows, we unconsciously project them onto others, creating monsters and enemies that are more revealing of our own darkness than anything else.
Shadow Tender is both a performance and a teaching methodology focusing on how we construct, project, and can compassionately confront and transmute the monstrous within ourselves and society. Jung identified Shadow projection as one of the roots of discrimination against marginalized communities. The political and socio-ecological events of the past year in the US and abroad have made it evident that there is a profound need for dialogue with the personal and collective Shadow self, inciting a sense of urgency for the creation of Shadow Tender.
Director/Designer/Performer: Natasha Kolosowsky
Co-Director: Aurelia Cohen
Dancer/Choreographer: Magda Kaczmarska
Performer/Designer: Maria Thomas
Sound Design: Adam Cooper-Terán