Victor E. Ferrall Artist in Residence

Dear Reader,

In February 2025 I was contacted by my former professor at Beloit College about my plans following graduating from the University of Illinois with my Dance MFA. Which happened back in May, dear reader. Time has become Inescapable dear reader! Anyways, my prof, Gina, was asking what I was up to because she was hoping to find someone to teach a technique course and a class on drag called "performing gender" during her year long sabbatical. And I had to decline!

I was unable to accept this full time spring teaching position, this faculty position at a small liberal arts college, this prestigious, impressive dream role I've had for a long time, because of my engagement with Tere O'Connor! Which, let's be honest, was a completely different dream come true. A dream because we were performing The Work in New York City. At New York Live Arts! For two weekends plus an APAP showing. I started The Process with Tere and the fabulous cast back in August of 2025 basically right after graduation and we just wrapped on our final show on January 1oth.

WHEW

However, that isn't where this ends, dear reader. No, because in a meeting over Zoom, Gina, my favourite former professor, my drag queen mother, offered the incredible opportunity to return to campus through the Ferrall Artist in Residence program. Vic E. Ferrall, Jr. is the late 9th president of the college and created this residency in 1998 to bring distinguished visual and performing artists to campus. And so, from February 2025 to July 2025, I worked on a proposal to visit the campus under this title... And now here I am.

The requirements of my two weeks at the college are to give a keynote lecture and create a final work to be performed at the College's Chelonia Dance Concert in February of 2026. The work is meant to be public facing but the topics were up to me. I decided it would make sense to create a smaller version of my thesis production with a honing in on how might this work resonate differently with an audience at this small liberal arts school instead of the large public university it was created at.

Below you can read my reflections which catalogue my time here. It will be more diary-like with a final polished reflection later on.

At the end of this post are the videos I used to lure students into my creative process and describe the final work that I wanted to create during my time at the college.

Thank you for reading and please keep an eye out on the posts for updates.

-Gabriel

Victor E. Ferrall Artist in Residency Week 1 Reflection

-Monday Jan 26th- I woke up early and ate a hotel breakfast buffet while learning about Minnesota, I ate a waffle with peanut butter, orange juice, lemon tea, some potatoes, and sausage as one woman spoke into the phone “never have I ever heard someone use jealous and Beloit in

Goob OnlineGabriel Bruno Eng Gonzalez

Victor E. Ferrall Artist in Residency Week 2 Reflection

-monday feb 2- Working Title: Post-Internet-Dance-Theatre-Production-Performance-Show Reader, Welcome to week 2 of this residency. We’re, i’m hard at work with Cullyn Murphy’s MULTI class. Here are the notes I sent to the musicians: Notes on MusicNotes on Music.pdf672 KBdownload-circle -tuesday feb 3rd- Rehearsal Footage from Tuesday Night Rehearsal -tuesday

Goob OnlineGabriel Bruno Eng Gonzalez

Hi.

My MFA thesis, Stunning!, was performed January 30th - February 1st, 2025 in Urbana Illinois

Developed across 27 two-hour rehearsals, 4 rehearsal showings, 1 designer run, 1 invited dress, and 1 full production tech period.
It can be summarized as a dance project about what happens to our bodies when we live online.

⇧YOU CAN READ THE WHOLE THESIS up THERE⇧

and/or

⬇︎YOU CAN WATCH SAVE SOME TIME AND WATCH SOME VIDEOS down HERE⬇︎

OCTOBER 2024

Screenshot

I set out to create a choreography of the glitching, fractured screen I saw the world through. I was feeling Zoom fatigue and Scroll fatigue and Doom fatigue and wondered if performance could capture that.

Layer 1

The initial screenshot acts as an anchor and an invisibility shield. The green screen goes up, the dancers disappear, but only on the screen. In real life you're seeing trained bodies moving in coordination playing pretend with green fabric.

I find it impossible to ever make a dance that is not earnest and a little silly, but by leaning into that I feel allowed to create something with layered meaning.

Layer 2

The performers loop, lag, and overload on purpose. They bark, and grimace, and growl and yelp. Because they're human, because they're frustrated, and distracted.

Because instead of distraction becoming a failure in an economy of attention, distraction becomes profitable.

Layer 3

In the world of Stunning!, I want screen fatigue to become choreographic material and challenge what it means to perform when and if attention is product.

DECEMBER 2024

I believe Stunning! as a performance most effectively reshapes attention using the embodiment and labor of live performance.

Labor in this dance is not only that of navigating The Digital but doing so seamlessly as if second nature while also navigating choreography that requires technique and devoted in-person rehearsal.

Layer 1

Through repeated 'Loops' or 'Layers' of screen recordings, audience begin to understand that a world is being built.

The Work, and the dancers' on-stage Work, adapts to systems of optimization, surveillance, and constant visibility by building their own system live and by any means necessary.

Using the tools available. Using the stress and vulnerability of performance. Using the instance of the dancer, and the total commitment of body.

Layer 2

Stunning! was made with a lot of experiments. A DIY-ness permeates all of the dance. Something which was carried over from making work in Quarantine.

Layer 3

But it is my desire as an educator, to bridge the gap between perception and understanding. Because otherwise, technology can seem like magic.

I want dancers and artists to live in an expansive future, an optimistic future.

And I believe performance can make visible the pressures shaping contemporary attention and usher in more human imaginations.

January 2025

The loops come out of necessity which then became aesthetic.

Stunning! is meant to stun, is meant to disorient, but also teach.

By having the same choreography multiple times, audience can feel at ease about "seeing the right thing."

At some point it may become a wash, at some point you may realize the videos are as live as the dancing.

While it is a dance about being online too much.

It is also a question of what the buffering, Zoom lags, browser tabs, and the emotional turmoil of laboring with technology is meant to accomplish. Is this the creative outlet now? Or is it okay to dream of something else. Is it okay to misuse the tools at our disposal?

This comes from my own feeling of being tired of "clocking in" for a part time job for tech Billionaires.

For selling my attention, for scrolling, and scrolling for unknown amounts of time with nothing to show for it.

The dancers repeat things until they break.

Because that’s what the internet does to us.

Stunning! is about attention, surveillance, and why exhaustion somehow became an aesthetic.

And if your nervous system feels glitchy, this piece is also about you.

Google Drive

Ferrall Artist in Residence

Google Docs