The jack-o-lantern I engraved two Halloweens ago with Chat Pile's dripping logo and then named "Davis", now despondently imploding in its afterlife, can rest easy as the band has shared news of a new, vastly superior artistic homage to their work. The Nashville-based dance/movement ensemble PYDANCE is currently performing an adaptation of God's Country, the critically and cultishly acclaimed 2022 debut album by the Oklahoma City foursome.
Chat Pile, who are are currently finishing their first conquest of the Southeast US with portrayal of guilt and Nightosphere, took to Instagram this morning to praise and promote PYDANCE's production, calling it a "new level" of the "ultimate compliment" that is art their music has inspired.
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The band, perhaps now inundated by waves of (still-awesome) Send my body to Arby's fan tattoos, wrote of the unprecedented approach, "We are humbled, surprised and maybe even a little confused (but in the best way possible)."
Founded by director Asia Pyron in Boston, PYDANCE's mission is to use movement grounded in research to "instill the audience with an experience of curiousity and excitement for storytelling through bodily movement exploration." Hoping to reflect the album's grotesque and incendiary insights in the Nashville productions, PYDANCE writes:
With explosive energy and jolting precision, seven of the city’s most intensely physical performers channel the post-punk fury and passion of a young generation at a boiling point in choreographer Asia Pyron’s high-velocity work set to the epic music of cult rock band Chat Pile.
A video clip in the post shows seven performers rehearsing a moment of appropriately agitated choreography (some clearly inspired by hardcore dancing) set to Chat Pile's "Why?"—a God's Country touchstone that asks frankly why homelessness and its horrific conditions persist in American society, in which frontman Raygun Busch rages, "I've never had to push all my shit around in a shopping cart—have you?! Have you ever had ringworm? SCABIES?!"
PYDANCE's production of Chat Pile's God's Country will be performed tonight and tomorrow (Friday and Saturday, May 17-18) at Oz Arts in Nashville, TN, as part of its third annual Brave New Works Lab. Shows open at 8pm; tickets are $20-25 for general admission. Given that this is an opportunity to witness professional dancers adapt a gotdamned manic track titled "Wicked Puppet Dance," Nashville-area Pile fans might be in for something exceptional.
