Davis and Gould’s collaboration began as an exploration of reliance, control, and care. Matty Davis’s work frequently uses choreography as a tool to cultivate high-stakes relationships—ranging from the interpersonal to the cosmic—that push himself and others to creatively face and negotiate forces that drive some of the most important parts of our lives: trust, risk, love, empathy, commitment, and responsibility. After the sudden and late onset of Tourette syndrome, Ben Gould’s practice adapted to focus on the body, exploring loss of control, resistance, and energy systems within and outside our physiology. With the body as a source, Gould’s multidisciplinary practice is driven by his neurological condition, which provides both a choreographic motor and ideological framework for projects ranging from site-specific performances to sculpture and film.

DC EMPTY was the U.S. museum premiere of Carriage Bearance Severance. The work has previously been performed at Palais de Tokyo, Bozar, Carnegie Mellon’s Miller ICA, Human Resources, the Chicago Cultural Center, Open Spaces, Creative Growth, Queenslab, as well as in a former military battery, a limestone cave network, and aboard a moving vessel on the Chicago River.