[Music]
ELIZABETH STREB: They call the action Streb.
And we think it stands for strength, trust,
risk, energy, body.
[Music]
My studio in Brooklyn, my laboratory, is called
Slam! and that stands for Streb Lab for Action
Mechanics.
It's designed to be open source.
it's all public, all the time.
Y'know, sort of modeled after a 7/11 rather
than a church.
I'd love it to be a public park.
I want to see if there's some equation that
would create a vibrant space that was all
public all the time and I chose Streb Extreme
Action and we would share that space with
Kids' Action, which now has something like
350 kids a week come through there and our
rehearsals and some of our shows would happen
there.
And a rental program.
I was very interested in seeing how my dancers
could rehearse while kids were flying around
and renters were there with their lyra and
their hoops.
I wanted to demythologize the practice of
making work and bring back in some of the
people that as a young artist, y'know I couldn't
keep out because I was working in cheap spaces
that had a lot of traffic.
So going back to that has revitalized my practice
and also I keep meeting all these people.
They come in y'know.
They're kids from a high school in the Bronx
or they're a family that met us in Wyoming
when we were touring and it has been a vivid
exchange of information.
I think also the notion—the notion that
there's maybe three things going on at the
same time while I'm rehearsing in the middle
of the day with my company.
I don't know who those people are.
We just glance across the space and acknowledge
each other and each others' practice and in
this osmotic way, learn from it.
It's just been a very invigorating idea my
question now is the messages embedded in the
surface of the outside of buildings like you
talk of Lincoln Center or Carnagie Hall or
City Center or BAM, etcetera etcetera are
in those fabrics.
Those materials.
Y'know, glass and wood and brick.
And I guess the final thing I'd say that I
thought was most critical was what do I offer?
I was trying to take what I've made in the
high art world y'know because I had to have
a reputation to do this type of this experiment
and I wanted to throw that product, that movement
that I call pop action, back onto the slop
of the street.
No one cared and respected it at all to see
and examine what relevance it might have and
I also wanted to understand issues of class
and I came from the working class, I was adopted
at two years old and my father was—my adoptive
father—was a mason and it was not, it is
not like that in the dance world.
Anyway, I am very very interested in diversifying
the audience.
And the audience I just don't mean race and
point of view.
I mean class and I believe that the theater…
it's difficult to have a very working class
person, it's not impossible, to go into a
theater and feel comfortable.
So I want that to be true of SLAM.
I want them to walk in there and just think
it's their space.
They pay taxes and they own it.
I believe it's critical to keep it public,
keep it open to intruders and I actually think
the equation of strangers and interruption
create magic.
There's not an idea that exists that can't
be interrupted if it's a good enough idea
it'll come back to you and I think that that
makes the space vibrant because what's more
critical than construction workers building
a building.
Everyone's watching them.
Why can't I be watched?
I'm never going to talk anyone into believing
this is critical and it increases our vital
life signs and our happiness quotient and
all that.
Again, we're still gathering data.
I can't prove anything.
We just notice how much fun it is to go to
work.
I'm Elizabeth Streb.
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