Untitled Touch—a collaboration between choreographer Stephen Petronio and composer Son Lux—will premiere March 28-April 2, 2017 during Stephen Petronio Company’s 23^rd season at The Joyce Theater. The original 30-minute dance work by Petronio will feature a commissioned score by Son Lux, aka Ryan Lott. Untitled Touch is the artists’ fifth collaboration. The work will also include the contributions of Petronio’s eight dancers, H. Petal (costumes), and Ken Tabachnick (lighting).

Untitled Touch is about the immediacy and intimacy of physical contact – a timely theme in an era of empty digital connection and polarized politics. In dialogue since this summer, Petronio and Lott together are sourcing material for movement, sound textures, and a unified arc for the whole piece. Their mutual point of departure being “friction,” the two artists are engaged in a continuous back-and-forth yielding a sonic atmosphere that is propelling Petronio’s creative intention. The connections of choreography and score are being refined now in daily rehearsals.

In Untitled Touch, Petronio moves beyond the abstract architectures that typically drive his work. The choreography focuses on connectedness and the impact of heightened sensitivity. Guided by improvisational exercises—some learned by Petronio from the master postmodern innovators—Untitled Touch centers on tactile exploration: how we navigate through a maelstrom of action together, how our bodies enliven a space, and how a space can inhabit us. Untitled Touch mines a world of contact to reveal the social codes of touch—touching physical architecture and space, touching ourselves and touching each other.

This fall and winter, the Company refined a movement language built around these themes – mostly presented through partnering. In Untitled Touch, bodies press, corral, and prod in hand-to-hand, hand-to-body, and body-to-body actions, in couples and groups. Teams intertwine then challenge the pathways of opposing dancers as they strive to complete their spatial tasks. Aggression, sensitivity, and delicacy all live this world.

Lott’s score features the same contrasts. He uses the haunting but warm texture of his own voice and samples chosen through an exploration of humanness, intimacy, and the sensual present. His improvisations have included surface-to-surface interactions of disparate objects to yield unexpected results. Then, extending these resulting unexpected sounds electronically, he has produced an otherworldly, altered sonic quality. SPC is now working with a second draft of Lott’s score, to be received in final form before the March 2017 premiere.

Petronio and Lott’s creative process has been tested through past collaborations ranging from short, 15-minute pieces to major evening-length collaborations, including commissions for Ballet de Lorraine, National Dance Company Wales, and Stephen Petronio Company. Supported by New Music USA, Lott’s live band with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City provided the soundscore for Like Lazarus Did in 2013.

Following the Joyce premiere, Untitled Touch will be available for touring, with bookings at White Bird in Oregon and Laguna Dance Festival in California already in discussion. Educational components of this work are also in development with a focus on non-dancer populations and audiences in nontraditional dance environments.