“A people who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters of the world would have applauded, with conscious pride, the representation of ancient freedom, if they had not long since been accustomed to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of liberty and greatness.”

– Edward Gibbon

a world premiere from Daniel Felsenfeld
on texts of Edward Gibbon, Susan Sontag, Thomas Paine, Saul Alinsky,
James Baldwin, Cleve Jones, William T. Vollman, and Christopher Hitchens
with the International Contemporary Ensemble

Blunt Movements: Rising Down is a new kind of mass: it takes the vivid text of Edward Gibbon’s epoch-making (and epoch-explaining) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as the “Ordinary” of this unconventional setting. To this, Daniel Felsenfeld adds tropes: texts of radical 20th- and 21st-century thinkers — from the early rationalism of Thomas Paine, through the queer activism of Cleve Jones and James Baldwin, to the riotous skepticism of Christopher Hitchens.