Talk about underground.
A group of artists and dancers have transformed the massive basement of a Dean Street industrial building in Crown Heights into a cave, complete with stalactites that they say are indicative of their frame of mind.
“A lot of the cave symbolism came up like a revelation,” said Laura Rey Cuille, describing what led her and a team of collaborators to outfit the bare room in faux-rock formations made of chicken wire, burlap, and plaster.
Cuille was working on a series of sculpture casts of people’s bodies alongside other artists in the building between Classon and Franklin avenues when she realized that her three-dimensional art would serve better as a stage set. A group of choreographers and dancers signed on to help. Together, they built the primordial chamber over the course of the summer and staged a series of shows called “Archaic Remnants” in October and November.
The project was inspired by Swiss father of psychoanalysis Carl Jung, who argued that there are primordial images out there that anyone can tap into, Cuille said.
The building’s landlords are artists, too, and have given the cave people complete creative freedom over the space and have even attended some of their shows, Cuille said.
“I didn’t have to worry about what I was putting up at all in terms of structure,” she said. “It’s been really great having that energy from people who own the space.”
A second round of underground performances is in the works for the spring, but the team is still working on a concept, she said.
