Set in an abstract corporate America, Cubicle explores the human condition under cramped control and a monotonous reality, exposing an underlying counterbalance between freedom and anarchy in the workplace. Anonymity and confinement set the pace in this corporate sea of grey as we witness a multitude of shifting landscapes as abstract representations of a familiar work environment. Boxing in both their sanity and distinctiveness, we witness the struggle to maintain a sense of individuality.
On and around a giant morphing staircase with multiple doors, passageways, and shifting surfaces, the dancers reckon with themes of journey and transition and the tenuous balance we attempt to strike each day as both indomitable drivers and unwitting passengers.
A visceral and emotional journey through the ebb and flow of the human experience. As the performers struggles to find their balance on a voyage of destiny and destination, Trajectoire shows the transcendence of the human soul against all odds. Trajectoire is a 3,000 pound boat made of wood, aluminum, and steel and premiered in 1999 at El Camino College in Torrance, CA. Trajectoire was commissioned by: Benedicta Arts Center, College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, MN; El Camino College, Torrance
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director. With additional support from the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Cal State Long Beach, CA; and the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, Denver, CO; and The City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.
Like its predecessor, begins with a cube. The cube in this second installment has now multiplied in its number of components, allowing many shifting symmetrical landscapes to illuminate the relationship between the universal language of mathematics and the human force that manipulates it. The performers represent abstract factory workers within a mechanical world in which they deconstruct, reconstruct and reorganize their environment, ultimately to discover that the answers they are seeking.
Is set on an abstract dome structure sitting on a reflection of itself. The performers explore metaphors of infinite space, continuous movement, and our voyage into the unknown future. The dome’s organic patterns evoke the craters of the moon, a honeycomb of bees, a shifting brain, or an undiscovered starship. As the trilogy concludes, Fluid Infinities investigates the persistence of life through struggle and the promise of life to change beyond the space of time.
explores themes of feeling lost, finding a sense of purpose, and coming together. Influenced by the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, Transit Space uses skateboard ramps as set pieces to represent an urban environment with ever-shifting physical and emotional spaces.
Humachina (2002, re-staged in 2006) explores the relationship between human motion and mechanical forms using the most simple and important of machines, the wheel. The piece depicts the fragility and endurance of the human spirit in our increasingly technological world and asks: At the end, which will remain, man or machine?
Voyage (2018) is DIAVOLO’s newest adventure and is inspired by travels in space and the 50th Anniversary of the first moon landing. A young woman dreams of traveling distances only astronauts can, escaping from the ordinary world into a surreal landscape of infinite possibilities. Gravity-defying bodies join her on the journey in a universe that is alive with kinetic energy, fantastical whimsy and surprising transformation.
