Project Description

Julia Mandle created ERIKA, a three-part outdoor performance, to heighten our environmental awareness by bringing attention to an ecological disaster. In December 1999, oil tanker ‘Erika’ spilled several thousand tons of heavy fuel into the Atlantic Ocean near the French coast. Hundreds of people worked to save the wildlife and foliage from the contaminated water.

Inspired by the tragic cleanup efforts, Mandle evoked this event through changing compositions of blue and black: symbolic costumes, movement, music and a 60 foot-long stage. A core of six performers alluded to the aftermath of the spill. A chorus of 30 dancers in identical blue dresses shook geometric hand boxes, sifting blue powder into the area.

The performers’ movement was drawn from a range of imagery: the methodical, factory-like clean-up efforts of washing and sifting gestures; the wreckage site and the overturned tanker; and the birds with oil saturated wings and their transformation. The symbolism of the performance also extended to the sifting through issues of liability among the oil company, ship owner, and crew. The oil spill of December 1999 was not the first to effect these waters. In 1978, another tanker spilled 200,000 tons of light fuel that devastated the area. The recurrence, like the cyclical structure of ERIKA, underscored the vulnerability of the environment and the struggle to restore ecological balance.