CRANE & MAN (REDCAT Theatre, 2020)

Click the image to watch the performance of CRANE & MAN.

Devised and improvised by Anna Ialeggio and Robyn O’Dell

Sound and Costume by Anna Ialeggio

Many thanks to REDCAT Theater; Highways Performance Space; Michael Thurin and

Morgan Embry; Darcy Love, Anne Lacey, and the International Crane Foundation; Brad

Strobel and Necedeh Wildlife Refuge; Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge; Signal Fire Arts;

& with great respect and gratitude, George Archibald.

Artist Anna Ialeggio and dancer Robyn O’Dell’s Crane & Man explores the complex

trans-species kinship between a scientist and a bird. Inspired by the true story of an

endangered crane and an ornithologist who is committed to preserving her unique genetic

line, we propose the deep complexities of the original story as an unfolding field to experience

a new form of empathetic, nonbinary connection. Crane & Man creates an inviting “theater

vivarium” where semi-(un)natural conditions for observation and voyeuristic study unfold by

employing a highly improvised choreographic score, as well as our respective repetories in

dance, clown, queer theory, and ecology.

Anna Ialeggio is a Vermont-raised, Los Angeles-based queer interdisciplinary artist, performer,

and educator. As a guide with Signal Fire Arts, they lead wilderness trips for artists and cultural

workers into remote public lands. Unsuccessful in audition bid for salaried role as charismatic

prehistoric quadruped at the Natural History Museum; MFA (University of California, Irvine)

2019.

Robyn O’Dell is a dancer, performer and educator. Robyn’s choreographic interests lie in

the space between theatre and dance; where the psychological meets the physical, where

abstraction intersects with realism, and subtext coexists with text. She received her MFA

in Dance from the University of California, Irvine in 2019.