Varvara, an evening-length solo choreographed and performed by Jenna Riegel, is a response to both Alexander Rodchenko’s photograph “Performing Furniture” (1922), which features his artistic collaborator and life partner Varvara Stepanova, and to Stepanova’s body of creative work.

One of the prominent Russian Constructivist artists, Stepanova’s endeavors included textiles, visual poetry, costumes and set designs. Konstantin Rudnitsky, a Soviet theater critic of their time, wrote, “The human body was perceived as a machine: man had to learn to control that machine. It was the theatre’s function to demonstrate the fine tuning of the human ‘mechanisms’.” 

Varvara draws on Stepanova’s artwork as inspiration for movement making and comments on this Constructivist view of theatre’s function by exploring the body’s reaction to considering it as a mechanization versus perceiving and allowing it to be its own unruly, chaotic mess of expression. The work weaves together the worlds of Stepanova and Riegel through an interplay of what is real and what is imagined and speaks to themes of brokenness and rebirth. 

Collaborators include director Anna Adams Stark, lighting designer Kathy Couch and stage manager Alex Davis.