Performance Video, Joyce Theater, New York

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from Dianne McIntyre as part of Willi Smith: Street Couture.

“One segment of the performance includes dancers doing aviation maneuver exercises. In the last exercise the instructor calls ‘take-off from a forced landing.’ The dancers struggle and struggle but cannot get off the ground. I enter as the mother in a white jumpsuit and speak words my mother would say to us, ending with, ‘it’s only gravity that pulls us down, pulls us to the earth. But I’ve always felt that if you could get a little air underneath your feet, you could just float’ . . . For the opening night I received flowers from Willi and the card said, ‘Maybe now we’ll finally take off . . . ’”
—Dianne McIntyre, dancer-choreographer

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Willi Smith: Street Couture.