Photos of Proceed with Caution by Ryan Collerd from the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival performances.

Proceed with Caution was directed and produced by Darcy Lyons

Co-choreographed, written and performed by Emma Elsmo, Gabi Montoya, Olivia Naegele, and Sammi Rosenfeld

Previous contributors to the work include Amalia Colon-Nava, Mason Rosenthal, and Carlos Campillo Rubio

Original Costumes created by Cybele Moon

Video created, compiled, and edited by Darcy Lyons

About proceed with caution:

Proceed with Caution grapples with personal, social, and global security and trust in the present-day—a time of global violence, the Trump presidency, mass shootings, and the #MeToo movement. A group of performers explore security through dance, video projection, and spoken and recorded words,

Refreshed and expanded after it’s premiere in the 2018 Fringe Festival, the work directed by Darcy Lyons is back to take the stage at one of Philadelphia’s best venues for dance.

Expanded and updated over the past year, Proceed with Caution includes a new twenty minute section about security after 9/11. The central theme of the work comes from security expert Bruce Schneier. He writes: “Security is both a reality and a feeling and they’re not the same thing… The foundation of security is trust, both personal trust and global trust.”

The piece begins to address these questions: How do humans build trust in dance? How do we build trust with each other? How do we build trust in the world at large? How do we address and assess our fears about personal safety? How do our personal feelings of security intersect with global security? How do we make an impact on security through art and activism? With the support of projected video dispersed throughout the piece, the group of performers tell raw stories in their own voices and bodies of their real life experiences of feeling safe, feeling scared, and being truly endangered. The new hour-long version evolves as it moves from the personal to the global, addressing modern issues and how they affect our individual and collective associations and understandings of safety within an increasingly turbulent humanity. Proceed with Caution does not claim to have all the answers, but it’s worth experiencing because the work takes a brave step into exploring one of today’s greatest challenges that everyone can relate to: security.