1811 GRID, GRID SCENES and FOURTEENTH STREET

Harmattan Theater's Grid Scenes emerged from an interest in the peculiar ecology of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Fourteenth Street is the first crosstown artery where the 1811 Grid began. It is also a cross street that connects the Hudson River to the East River downtown. Fourteenth Street is a changing barometer of New York City's mercantile and transportation landscapes. Depending on the time of day or night, the street has a distinctive sensation from block to block. The flaneur, the stranger and the immigrant all find their way to Fourteenth Street in their discovery of New York. What Fourteenth Street does not invite is a moment of quietitude from which to view the street. Fourteenth Street is a place of perpetual movement, of transit and transitoriness.

The performance GRID SCENES experiments with stillness on Fourteenth Street drawing on Architects Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner's idea of Cinematrics and Jean Luc Godard's notion of a city in motion viewed through panning, tracking and hand held camera shots. GRID SCENES is a choreography of transit - at once slowed down movement and frenetic activity.