When Tayla Rubin was little, she would tell adults she wanted to be ‘a ballerina and a gorilla’ when she grew up. Zoology is a hybrid performance lecture and dance work for one woman and two children that attempts to live up to that childhood dream.
The work was inspired by slides found in a New York City antique shop of zoo animals in vibrant 1980s Ektachrome colours.
In the work, the animals tell their wordless story of extinction through movement that has absurdity and poignancy at its core.
In a domestic living room, in a house floating in the universe, a white poodle transmits wordless messages impossible to receive and essential for this present moment.
There is a dream-like lecture at the centre of Zoology. It riffs on zoos, panda diplomacy, Reagan and Thatcher, The Wizard of Oz, extinction and Talya’s own childhood – until it falls apart.
Zoology is a timely work of true imagination and vitality, a deeply personal journey of listening towards surprising transformation.
It provokes a visceral reconnection with our inner wildness and invites us to sit in the unresolved spaces of the current extinction crisis.
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