Because there’s only so much to go around. Or is there?

CAPITALIST DUETS is seven, independently-authored duets performed simultaneously as an unaffected spectacle, complete with merchandise table. There is no composer, no architect, no central authority–only the radical aesthetic modulation of fourteen paired-off performers, each holding tenuously to the logic of their own creation.

CAPITALIST DUETS concludes a three-year experiment to devise a group work responding to the commodity-status of contemporary performance. It’s an endlessly re-scalable art-product fit for the practical anarchy of business-as-usual. Each of the fourteen artists in this iteration are given a micro-grant for the time, props, travel, costume and all other creation expenses related to their duet. With no other guiding framework in place, the normally hidden labour of production becomes startlingly visible–and the visible, in turn, becomes practice. From dancer and choreographer to theatre technician and art-presenting partner, in CAPITALIST DUETS everyone involved holds the status of performer. And every performer dances according to the same rules.

CAPITALIST DUETS is made possible through the support of Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.