Dancers! Musicians! Comedians! Elvis impersonators! Get your acts ready because The Floor Is Yours will return to Barking Legs this spring.
The variety-show-meets-artists-workshop will be under the guidance of dance collective Collaborative Roots. Whether you come to perform, to watch, or to do both, expect to laugh, cry, and have a heckuva time.
What’s Old Is New Again
At this new iteration of The Floor Is Yours, you’ll find familiar faces and renewed energy. Fear not: master ringmaster Marcus Ellsworth will man the mic May 5, but the Collaborative Roots members bring their own fresh approach to the event. What does this mean for you, audience members and Beloved Floorists? Expect a new emphasis on works in progress, including the opportunity for feedback if desired, and a format that combines performance with workshop in the most magical of ways.
You’ll still find radical openness and inclusiveness, both of art forms and points of view. You’ll still find the two-act format, with more complex and mature themes reserved for the second act. You’ll still find wholehearted support for the arts in all their crazy forms.
“[The Floor Is Yours] has been missed so much by so many people,” says dancer Kenneth Glatt, who performs as KG. “People have asked about it so many times it’s ridiculous.”
Meet Your Collaborators
The dance collective Collaborative Roots consists of Chattanooga dancers Kyle Dagnan, Cherokee (Coach) Aaron Ellison, Monica Alicia Ellison, Jessi Faircloth, Kenneth (KG) Glatt, Beth Markham Herring, Ann Law, and Novek li.
“While many of us had performed with Ann separately, we came together at the Drive-In Dances series during the pandemic,” Monica says. Together, Collaborative Roots has evolved a style that’s a conversation between hip hop, modern dance, improvisation, and Capoeira. “And if we’re lucky, we’ll get a tap dancer,” KG adds. They tend to work within the liberating but challenging parameters of structured improvisation — creating the dance in the moment within a framework that may involve structure, movement vocabulary, theme, or mood.
“We redefine what movement is, what it’s supposed to look like, what it’s supposed to feel like,” Jessi says.
In my experience, with these dancers, it’s a style that grips the audience by the throat. You stand up if you can. You feel movement inside yourself. By the end of the performance you’re exhausted, full of big thoughts — and also, perhaps, a nobler person than when you came in. It’s a style for the head and the heart.
“For me, it’s the emotional experience,” Coach Cherokee says. “If you ain’t trying to feel nothing, then don’t come see me.”
“I always want the audience to leave thinking,” Kyle adds.
If they’re lucky — and they work too hard not to be lucky — Collaborative Roots’ powerful energy will flood over into The Floor Is Yours as a whole.
“We are unique in that we are bringing in people who are diverse individuals with diverse ways of moving,” Beth says. “I’m not poet but [the Floor] gives me a space where I feel like I can come and be myself and just bring myself.”
To perform in The Floor Is Yours, you’ll need to sign up in advance. This is an 18+ show, as some content and themes may be mature.
The Floor Is Yours opens May 5. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Learn more and see how to sign up at facebook.com/barkinglegs.