In Written On the Body, Gary Lucas performs both composed and improvised soundtracks on solo guitar to 3 films by radical women film makers Shirley Clarke, Maya Deren, and Barbara Rubin. Alison Clancy will accompany both Lucas’s music and the films themselves with interpretive solo dances. This show at Roulette marks the duo’s second collaboration together—Lucas joined forces with Clancy in the spring of 2022 to accompany her solo dance to the Overture to The Flying Dutchman at MIT with his original solo guitar arrangement.

Gary Lucas original solo guitar soundtracks
Alison Clancy live solo dance
Chuck Smith film curator

FILMS:
Shirley Clarke—A Moment in Love (1957), 9 min
Maya Deren—The Very Eye of Night (1958), 15 min
Barbara Rubin—Christmas on Earth (1963), 25 min

Gary Lucas is a guitarist, Grammy-nominated songwriter and composer who has released over 50 albums, collaborated with everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Lou Reed, Jeff Buckley and Captain Beefheart, and performed live in over 40 countries.

Alison Clancy is the principal dancer of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet corps and a prolific songwriter and musician. She has the distinction of performing the longest solo dance ever at the Met to the overture to The Flying Dutchman.

Chuck Smith is a New York City filmmaker, TV producer, and writer who has produced documentaries and series for National Geographic, Discovery, CBS, and many others. His films include “Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground” (2019) and “Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle” (1999). The Bess film was turned into a book and published in 2013 by PowerHouse Books. Mr. Smith’s other independent films and interviews can be found on his YouTube Channel “ChuckSmithNYC” and on Vimeo. He is currently working on a film about The Fugs with the poet Ed Sanders.