Value Village goodie bags inspire interpretive dance
Kathryn Ricketts has developed a performance based on items found in goodie bags that are sold at Value Village stores.
Bulging Bag of Stories is inspired by the random assortments, like one that contains a day-timer calendar, a pen set with one pen missing and a padlock with a key in it.
Ricketts said the contents suggest stories of lives, real and imagined.
She lives near the Regina store and is often in there.
"I think that large wall that's just ceiling to floor of bags is just the best museum I know of," she said.
She began buying bags and has assembled a significant collection of 80 to 100.
Ricketts said the Value Village staff who package the $2.99 bags are, in her view, curators and she is interested in the choices they make.
"There are some kinds of categories but then you'll get the outlier, like a toothpick holder with a shaving brush and a comic strip," she said.
First, exhibit; then, dance
Ricketts arranged her collection as an art exhibit and, now, a dance. The performance grew from a study by dance students.
"I have been working with graduate students and developing systems and frameworks in order to extract character studies, situations and events," she said. "So we will start to look at the objects from different approaches."
From that examination, she said, stories evolve and become the basis for a dance.
"Some bags are more potent than other bags" when it comes to creating a narrative, she said.
Audience participation
Ricketts is performing her piece at the New Dance Horizons studio on Harvey Street.
She added that she always remains true to a bag's contents, no matter how seemingly disparate some items may seem.
The Saturday performance is set for 3 p.m. CST.
