Elizabeth Streb’s Action-Hero Choreography

[Coach] Attention, go!

Release it.

In the background, you hear impacts sounds.

We're talking about 160 pound body landing.

And for me, there's something profound about it.

(body landing) Yes, woo!

(suspenseful music)

I believe human's can fly.

And I believe that pop action is a methodology.

A pretty complex technique.

Even though from a distance,

we look like wild and crazy people.

Three, two.

(metal clang)

[Female] Nice.

[Elizabeth] The notion is always, in each of the pieces,

a rhythm I'm trying to figure out.

What is, essentially, the iambic pentameter of action.

Dropping.

(suspenseful music)

[Elizabeth] It annoys me and it's unforgivable,

in a lot of ways, that people keep coreographing to music,

and not exploring their form by default.

The idea of action and extreme action,

and the notion of landing, and the failure of flight,

these things don't lie.

Like what you see, is what is true

about movement on earth based on Newton's laws.

We haven't yet been able to access quantum mechanics,

but I wish we could go fast enough to disappear.

I wish we could figure out how

to go through each other's bodies or skip a spot in space.

And many, many people, most of the dancers I know,

basically don't wanna do this.

Like you've got body-stopping organs going.

So you've got something in your heart and soul,

each one of these action heroes,

have to agree to come into the room and take the hit.

You feel the gravity.

You are out of control.

And so it's really an acclimation.

It's an assessment of deciding to love being out of control.

Streb has been accused of being brutal

and masochistic and sadist and all that.

And all I'm trying to demonstrate is

there's enormous distance between death

and something ethereal.

And the difference between those two points,

is perhaps where the drama of action resides.

My business is to dig as deep as I can

in the queries I have about what's a real move.

And my belief is, if I can exercise that,

and demonstrate it and perform it,

all the rest will fall into place.

That feeling of falling, or fear of falling,

or however you want to quantify it,

if you're paying attention,

you're feeling those forces as you're falling.

And they can't disappear because

it's a present-tense technique.

Streb pop action is a present tense technique.

And you are in a millisecond at all times.