Parliament

“Parliament is a psychedelic thunderbolt. It draws everyone out of their day-to-day functional perception and plunges them into a lived world of communal wealth, mystery, beauty and potential.”

Parliament is a pioneering work of situational choreography and exploration of ecological aesthetics. The work offers participants a critically needed withdrawal from normal modes of social action and provides instead an innovative site for 21st-century experimentalist cooperation. Embedded in the immediacy of Kliën’s choreographic framework, citizens working in silence come together to bear witness to and hold council amidst the elemental phenomena and fundamental concerns of collectively lived experience. Pointing towards unseen and unexperienced modes of social organization, Parliament traverses, probes and navigates the paradigms that animate our present-day political relations.

The series of Parliament is presented by the Laboratory for Social Choreography (LSC). LSC focuses on the equitable transformation of social structures and the articulation of new modes of governance through aesthetics. It is part of the Kenan Institute of Ethics, and supported by the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Arts, and Duke Dance.

This is an open invitation to faculty, staff, students and the broader community to join a powerful experience created by choreographer and Duke Professor Michael Kliën. Bring friends. Food will be catered at 9PM.

Parliament is a closed participatory event. It is free of charge, but registration is required. Please confirm your participation with Courtney Crumpler at labsc@duke.edu as soon as possible.