this is the story of how the game saved me
Commissioned by Chapman University, assisted by Jennifer Vieweg
From Azuki:
This process has been risky, unknown, yet invigorating with creativity. I am thankful for my dancers and more thankful for the opportunity to present this on a beautiful stage like Musco Center for the Arts. This piece isn’t just a commissioned work, but rather an opportunity to truly represent myself as someone who spent hours in my own world with my video game console. Unbothered, I never wanted to explore reality sometimes. I wanted to beat the game. And I wished… these games were truly reality.
In a world where we are limited with what we can appropriately say, the curiosity remains of the language that can and cannot be said in video games vs. reality. This piece explores a narrative or experiencing loss, existence, and the choice of moving on. Composed by Robert Gaar, the piece unravels an electric vocabulary of work that plays with overstimulation and simplicity in one world.
Inspired by the video games Omori and Undertale, we enter an 8-bit RPG world where we have to make decisions to move forward, gain experience points, and sometimes, reset the game.
Dancers: Allyson Feltner, America Sanchez, Justin Reilly, Roman Romero, Izzy LaSusa, Sarah Laskowski, Mercedes Bracey, Mary Crum, Lainey Myers