Art Produce and Eveoke Dance Theatre want you to remember these women

For the upcoming “Reflections” performances, a large workshop in the back of Art Produce has been transformed into a multilevel, interactive art installation and stage complete with moving parts, running water and live-feed video.

“I do need to say that this has been its most transformative engagement so far,” said Art Produce owner Lynn Susholtz, who works as a public artist through her design studio, Stone Paper Scissors, and uses the workshop for fabrication. “It took me awhile to let go of my space and allow myself to see that this could happen.”

Ericka Aisha Moore, resident choreographer at Eveoke Dance Theatre, approached Susholtz last year with an idea for a site-specific narrative performance. Moore wanted to choreograph a piece based on six little-known women, including Rachel Corrie, a 25-year-old American who was killed by a bulldozer in 2003 while protesting for the rights of a Palestinian family, and Henrietta Lacks, a poor, black woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge before her death in 1951 and are still used in medical studies today. Moore saw the workshop’s potential to act as a stage separated into six sections that could be brought to life through installation art by Susholtz and artist Araceli Carrera.

“I wanted to do something to push myself as an artist and push myself to collaborate with other artists,” Moore said. “Just knowing how intimate this space is and how much is going on, I knew I’d be able to use it in a dynamic way…. Lynn eventually came around to the idea.”