What is What

My playful departure

Performance Strategy, "Manifestation Of The Minds' Eye Imagined" #billshannon 2014 Photo by Garret Jones 2014

Street Performance, Skateboarding Crutch Goofball Provocateur Character #billshannon 2014 Photo by Garret Jones 2014

My plate is full this year with multiple ongoing projects. The Rex "project" mentioned below several months ago has stabilized after 6 months of staggeringly little sleep ( or awake-ness ) and I am happy to share with you that the Rexy continues to payoff in a myriad of very small beautiful ways and I am BACK!

ABOVE: Limited Edition Lithographic Print by Bill Shannon, "I Will Dance With Strangers" 2012 I have ten of these for sale.

My dance family in NYC has been on the forefront of merging house dance and bboying flavors in dynamic and ever shifting ways since the 90's. It saddens me to share with you, my fans and followers that recently we lost one of our members B-Ill. Ths is a dancer who I had featured in a stage production called "Sketchy". The Fénz family gathered for Sketchy were veteran Step-Fénz and the next generation of the crew The X-Fénz. B-Ill represented the cutting edge of a new breakin style called "circus style" for Sketchy. B-Ill was also a featured dancer during a Maker Faire presentation in NYC I gave last year. In both events he delivered crowd pleasing and astounding moves. This video shows B-Ill presenting his "Circus Style" of dance in a rare backstage look at cast of Sketchy. I remember these days of building with the crew fondly and I always will. RIP B-Ill it was an honor to work with you.

ABOVE: Video footage of B-Ill participating in my stage production Sketchy featuring multiple generations of the Fénz Family

ABOVE: Working on some new stuff in a studio before taking it to the world..here is a still. The grey tubes are super light weight foam recycled from thrown out materials in Brooklyn. I like the antlike relativity of scale that the large bundle places my body in. Taking it out of the street context to share it in this studio theater backdrop isolates the design of the character. Variations after the jump.

Photos: Brian Cummings 2011

ABOVE: POLAND a quick pic of the Warsaw Center City. I am performing at www.cialoumysl.pl with DJ Brian Coxx

The first day I came in to choreograph aerial I had the twins doing tut style angular forms and trying to explain New Yorks house hip-hop and martial arts influenced Zoo-Fu style that I had learned from dancing with the Step-Fenz since 97.  I came in trying to get rhythms with freezes and glides.  I watched what they had too when we started out, which appeared to me to be the classical chest out flying “like in a dream” look combined with a drama-workshop-esque build of primal roars! at one another and thankfully some serious power and balance combo positions. i was envisioning a possessed techy Egyptian style. An aerial act of mechanisitc hieroglyphic flying form with 90 degree ankle and futuristic interlocking tic-toc skateboard referencing aerials.

ABOVE: The Atherton Twins perform an early version of the Aerial Straps Act in Cirque Du Soleils, Varekai.