Another Language Performing Arts Company

Elizabeth A. Miklavcic - Choreographic Works

Plax Attax - August 20, 1990

Plax Attax (1990)

Choreographer: Elizabeth A. Miklavcic
Music: (Video Credits)
Costuming: Elizabeth A. Miklavcic
Dancers: Sarah Hudelson, Christopher Murry Ivins, Eleni Kambouris, Michael Larkin, Elizabeth Miklavcic, Jimmy Miklavcic
Location: Exchange Place, Salt Lake City, Utah
Length: 6:14 minutes

Description
Elizabeth choreographed Plax Attax as a comment on the proliferation of plastic bottles in our lives. Using, as props, plastic bottles from just one product, Plax - a dental rinse, acquired over a period of time. The train sounds in the music symbolized how humanity is headed for a train wreck, because if there are so many bottles from just one product, just think about how there must be so many plastic containers in our lives.

Those bottles were worshipped as the central focus of this dance, and they were utilized as props, and sound making devices within the choreographic structure. Elizabeth was intrigued by the hollow percussion sound they made when hit on a part of the body and banged together together. This discovery was a running theme throughout Plax Attax and was featured during the climatic rhythmic unison section, toward the end of the dance.

At the end, with bottles strewn about, each dancer came downstage, pulled out a lighted, spinning, red top (not viewable in this documentation) that was activated, and left behind as each performer walked away. Until only one dancer was left banging the bottles on his head watching the spinning "circus" in front of him, that he helped to create.

This was the first performance of Plax Attax. Unfortunately, it was still in a rough state, and so many dancers crowded into the small stage area did not help the presentation of this piece. The 1991 performance is a much improved version of this dance.