In front of a full house, the Stranger Than Fiction spring season kicked off with Craig Lowy’s energizing OXD: One Extraordinary Day. The 2015 DOC NYC alum follows choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her Extreme Action Company as they prepare to catapult, bungee jump, and suspend themselves off famous London landmarks in celebration of the 2012 Summer Olympics. The troupe’s exhilarating performances explore what it means to make a clear, swift choice to act; to jump down the rabbit hole of fear with playful irreverence, unparalleled poise, an intrepid spirit, and the pluck to reemerge and do it all over again.
Through dance, pop action, and stunts that somersault the constraints of gravity, the Streb Extreme Action Company is a troupe of artists redefining the limits of possibility. OXD opens with try-outs for the troupe’s upcoming London event, which will include seven extraordinary and massively challenging performances. To audition, men and women who possess a supreme physical, emotional, and mental grit jump higher and higher off multi-tiered scaffolding. They land face-flat on a mat that has just the right amount of yield to absorb the shock of the fall and facilitate a rapid transition from belly to feet. Present alongside Lowy for the post-film Q&A, Streb said that the concept is about “removing unnecessary preparations and recoveries, you want them gone; I don’t see any reason with action to preempt what you’re going to see next–it’s a way to see the human body in motion that you might not see otherwise.”