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\u201cI come from show people,\u201d the sculptor and installation artist Karon Davis<\/a> said in an interview on Wednesday. \u201cThe minute I was born, I was handed tap shoes, ballet shoes.\u201d She\u2019s only half joking: her mother, Nancy Bruner, was a ballerina; her sister, Naja, who died at the age of 16, was an aspiring ballerina; and her father is the Tony- and Emmy-award-winning actor, dancer and singer Ben Vereen.<\/p>\n That immersion inspired her recent exhibition, \u201cBeauty Must Suffer,\u201d which opened on Oct. 12 at Salon 94<\/a> in Manhattan. The show consists of life-size figures, cast from live models in gauze and plaster of Paris, arranged in installations on two floors of the gallery\u2019s townhouse. On the second floor, plaster children practice at the barre, dancers rest, bow and stretch alongside floor-to-ceiling columns composed of pink tutus and piles of \u201cdead\u201d toe shoes. One of the sculpted dancers smokes; another ices her knee. The figures are clearly Black, though they\u2019re made from the starkest white materials; some of them even \u201cpancake\u201d their shoes, covering the pink satin with makeup to match skin tones. (Until fairly recently, the major makers of ballet slippers didn\u2019t produce a diverse range of colors<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Davis\u2019s focus here is on the realities that dancers, and especially Black dancers<\/a>, face in the world of ballet. \u201cI feel like the art I\u2019ve seen before on dancers has always just been about what happens onstage, which is perfection,\u201d Davis, 46, said. \u201cBut I want to show what happens before you get to that point \u2014 all the labor, all the sacrifice, all the bloody toes and the sore muscles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On the third floor, visitors will find what Davis calls a \u201csculpted ballet,\u201d in which a pair of cast figures replicate famous moments in the history of dance: Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn performing \u201cParadise Lost,\u201d choreography from Alvin Ailey\u2019s \u201cRevelations\u201d and Julius Wenzel Reisinger\u2019s \u201cSwan Lake.\u201d<\/p>\n On Saturday, as part of the Performa Biennial<\/a>, Davis will add another element to the mix: Two of the dancers who posed for the figures, Fabricio Seraphin and Vicky Lambert, will interpret Davis\u2019s sculpted ballet \u2014 which she has titled \u201cEcho and Narcissus\u201d \u2014 in the Salon 94 gallery on the third floor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the dress rehearsal on Wednesday, Davis worked with Seraphin and Lambert. The choreography that emerged over the two-hour session described a tale of unrequited love: Echo falls passionately in love with Narcissus, who loves her back until he sees his own reflection. At that point, all is lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n During the rehearsal, Ben Vereen, 77, dropped in from Los Angeles. He stayed close by his daughter\u2019s side, coaching the two dancers on how to evoke the passage from passion and seduction to heartbreak and pain that the story calls for. At one point, he looked with satisfaction on a tiny, mournful shake of the head that Lambert, 52, had added to her graceful arabesque. \u201cI think you just might have something here,\u201d he said slyly to his daughter, causing the room to fall out in laughter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always been a creative duo,\u201d said Davis, who said that even in her purely sculptural work, her father\u2019s extensive knowledge of stagecraft has helped her with things like how to light her objects. But this is dance: \u201cI told him what I was doing, and he got on a plane right away. He said, \u2018I\u2019m going to come to New York, let\u2019s play.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI was here for the opening, and saw the pieces come to life, and now Karon is taking it to another level,\u201d Vereen told me. \u201cThose statues already feel so alive. We\u2019re just finding ways to represent the movement that\u2019s already there.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis had been working with Seraphin and Lambert for the better part of a year to create her sculptures, posing them individually, using props so they could hold their lines while she cast sections of their bodies. She then pieced the fragments together, over steel armatures. \u201cI would come into Karon\u2019s studio and see my body parts strewn around, and that was a head trip,\u201d Lambert said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This week\u2019s rehearsals are the first time Lambert and Seraphin have actually danced together.<\/p>\n Being in the same space as their effigies is \u201csurreal,\u201d Seraphin, 28, said. Neither was expecting Vereen to be in the room \u2014 for Seraphin, who studied musical theater in his high school and played roles in a number of Bob Fosse set pieces, it was a special thrill. (Vereen won a Tony Award for his role in Bob Fosse\u2019s \u201cPippin\u201d in 1973, and worked closely with the choreographer over his career.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Davis studied dance in her early years but ended up majoring in filmmaking at Spelman College; after moving to Los Angeles, she married the painter Noah Davis<\/a> in 2008. In 2012, the couple founded the Underground Museum in the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles; part art gallery and part community center, it formed an important cultural hub for the area\u2019s mostly Black, working-class residents. After her husband\u2019s death in 2015, Davis continued as director of the museum while developing her own career as an artist. (The museum closed<\/a> in 2022.) Her last show in New York, at Jeffrey Deitch\u2019s gallery, centered on the Black Panthers founder Bobby Seale and the 1969 Chicago 8 trial.<\/p>\n \u201cEcho and Narcissus\u201d is still developing. The second half of the piece will be performed to Dinah Washington and Max Richter\u2019s \u201cBitter Earth,\u201d<\/a> but she\u2019s still deciding on the music for the first half. At the end of the rehearsal, she decided that she needed to fashion a mirror that will be used as a prop on Saturday.<\/p>\n Before she ran off to get her hands in plaster, she reflected on what will be the first time she\u2019s incorporated choreography into an art installation. \u201cIt feels so good to see it all come together,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to honor that part of me and honor my family and dancers in general.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeauty Must Suffer\u201d is on view through Dec. 23. \u201cEcho and Narcissus\u201d will take place on Saturday, Nov. 18, only, at 4 p.m. in the Salon 94 galleries; attendance is free with a reservation<\/a>. Salon 94, 3 East 89th Street, Manhattan, 212-979-0001; salon94.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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