Chez Deep: ‘Gloria’, p.2

, 9 July 2015
video

In March of this year, the Chez Deep collective – Sam Banks, Alexis Penney, Colin Self and Bailey Stiles – returned to the stage at Santos Party House in New York to perform their new show Gloria.  

Featuring full length documentation, as well as individual performances here, Gloria sees Chez Deep blurring boundaries and showing a more holistic way to perform [in] the world. It takes its starting point as drag performance, and quickly escalates in its intensity with self-awareness, brutality and honesty. Distinctly darker, grittier and more theatrical than 2013’s Common Visions, Gloria is more than just a “collaborative mixtape” of lip-synced pop songs.

Gloria is made up of a number of theatrical collaborative epics and soliloquies. From choreographed pop-group-esque dancing over Dream’s ‘This is Me’, to Bailey Stiles’ melancholy striptease over Janis Joplin’s ‘Summertime’ and Sam Banks’ glitched swagger over Jeremih’s ‘Planes (ft. JCole)’: there are few moments to catch your breath. Between songs an omnipresent “voice of God” (Linda Simpson) stitches everything together relaying its members’ personal experiences so that Gloria emerges as a story of death, violence, love, sacrifice, resurrection, fear and hope.

Through Gloria love and violence are intimately entwined. It’s almost a parable, almost a fairytale, and almost a prophetic vision of an apocalyptic future – but somehow there’s still flashes of hope.


Gloria
was filmed live on location at Santos Party House, New York by cinematographer Daniel Rampulla with Tyler Mariano on second camera, with DJ support from Brother Bruno Coviello and lighting from the Santos staff.

Art and economics is central to the Money Makes the World Go ‘Round series –exploring art and artists in a global market in collaboration with Video in Common –to publish every fortnight from the last day of March to July, 2015. It features six artists from cities around the networked world. **

Watch the video embedded above or see here for Part One.

This project has been made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England.