Splash Magazine’s LaRita S. Smith reviews The Seldoms’s recent Chicago premiere of Floe, their latest work.
The Seldoms – Dancing Through Crisis: How Movement and Interactive Media Shape Global Storytelling
In a world increasingly shaped by overlapping crises—climate change, political fragmentation, and the erosion of shared truth—artists are turning to hybrid forms of expression to make sense of the instability. Dance, especially when paired with multimedia and interactive storytelling, has become a potent vehicle for exploring these tensions. It offers a way of communicating that bypasses argument and ideology, reaching audiences through sensation, embodiment, and shared space. Even when the choreography itself falters, the message can still resonate with clarity and force.
Floe, The Seldoms; photo courtesy The Seldoms.
Few companies embody this approach as consistently as The Seldoms, the Chicago‑based ensemble known for multimedia performance works that interrogate complex social and environmental issues. For 23 years, the company has pursued an ambitious vision grounded in research, collaboration, and community engagement. Their projects have examined everything from plastic pollution and the 2008 recession to presidential power, civil rights, and the accelerating climate crisis. Their recent work, Floe, continues this lineage.
Floe is a dance‑theater work that confronts the climate crisis not as a distant abstraction but as a lived, bodily reality.
