It was a delightful opportunity to work closely with Angela Risi last spring for Shambavi Kaul's Expanded Cinema class's installation project "Interventions," which took over the Rubenstein Arts Center for the evening of Dec. 7, 2022.
Angela was an open-hearted inquisitive artist and dancer who knew much about the intersection of music and movement. Angela's installation required a fully filled dance cube with sculptural fabric, giant rings and lights hanging from the grid next to the ceiling. She had thought through every element of her installation, and she was easy to work with to make the environment she wanted to express.
Angela loved music and had a unique way of communicating the sounds of her stage, so I volunteered to create an original piece of music for her installation called "AR a nervous system with heart." The concept entailed medically recorded circulatory system noises layered with imagined sounds of electricity firing through the nervous system.
From this basis, a composition was formed. From this experience, memories were formed. Her audience was wowed by her movement, contact improv with other dancers, integrated plastique art, projections and interactive vibe. A community builder, Angela encouraged everyone to move, dance and interact, and she did this in a dear and compassionate manner. The audience was engulfed in Angela's total creative vision.
Angela was a special and unique talent. It's a joy to directly experience Angela's uncompromising ability to express and be herself as a student, an artist, a person and much more.
The weight of a constricted heart is contradictory to the presence of Angela Risi but the absence of Angela — amplified by the shock of gun violence — catalyzes that.
Christopher Scully-Thurston is the Theater Operations Supervisor of venue and production management at Duke.
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