Dramaturgical Loops: Sarah Bebe Holmes and Rain Anya

The performers envelop you into their otherworldly environment where gravity is more a suggestion than a law. LoopsEnd features Paper Doll Militia’s most edgy and dynamic short form works to date, retaining the dark and magical quality the company is most known for. 

Appealing to audiences of all ages and languages, the show has its foundations in universal human concepts, told with enticing visuals and non-verbal unfolding narrative. With a diverse use of mediums and aerial apparatus, the stage is continuously transformed.  A true journey of the human spirit, LoopsEnd shows us a mirror of our own experiences reminding us of our collective grit and strength.

Interview Questions answered collectively by Sarah Bebe Holmes and Rain Anya

What was the inspiration for this performance?
LoopsEnd is a journey told in three parts, one of them, Unchained, was performed at last year’s Manipulate.  This year we present to you the other two pieces; Unhinged XY and Ashes. Each was conceived in different ways.  

Ashes was born out of the rubble, literally.  Outside our old training space in Portobello, the buildings, one by one were being torn down as the industrial estate was being repurposed.  Ours was the last standing and as we went in to work on aerial everyday we passed by piles of rubble.  

The rubble represented what was, what is, what everything becomes, just a pile of Ashes.  We were inspired to explore our relationship to our impermanent physical world.  Society can become obsessed, or fearful, of the physical things around us, our possessions.   

The characters in the piece carry out these relationships with their aerial apparatus, ropes with bags of rubble and ash attached. We flung this rubble around our lone building in the exploration of what happens when you give weight to aerial.  

Unhinged XY has had a very long life.  This was originally a choreographic inquiry.  Parts of the choreography date back to Paper Doll Militia’s first show Rara Avis.  Over a decade of working together we keep re-investigating this piece.  Digging deeper into the characters and the story that lay inherently in the choreography.  

If you saw us at Manipulate 2014 you may recognize a few things. For this current instalment, we are working with the integration of movement, aerials, and animation. 

Over a cup of coffee and a book of poetry by Tim Burton, Paper Doll Militia was born. The child of four artists in Santa Fe, 
Paper Doll Militia has roots in circus, original music, puppetry, and dreamy, whimsical, dark storytelling.  Read The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and think of us in a cafe in the desert dreaming of circus with a story. That's who we were, that's who we are.