Erik Thurmond’s ‘Smoke’ unfolds through movement, electropop at the Goat Farm 

Smoke, a live performance grounded in performance art, contemporary dance and electronic pop will soon take place at the Goat Farm. The large-scale work will come to life across various rooms and scenes.

The show follows a traveling caravan of performers who have made their home in this space and transformed it into a DIY theater. They invite the audience to join them on their journey. 

Against the building’s interior of distressed brick walls, cement floors and wooden beams sits a variety of props. In one room a chair faces a mirror and in another, chains hang from columns. Patches of light fall in through the windows — it feels like a space in the making. A cast member sings into a mic, the distorted sound crackles and tunnels through the spaces. After, the constant hum of music still lingers, lending the feeling that the performance continues out of sight within a room somewhere.

The idea that the space is not just a backdrop but instead an active collaborator is central to choreographer and artist Erik Thurmond’s creative process. He seeks to respond to all elements of the space — from the acoustics and architectural bones of the building itself to the dust and dirt.

Thurmond is a professional dancer, choreographer and music composer. Smoke is an expansion of his solo music project Pasquale, which explored mystic spirituality through the media of electronic pop. 

The idea for Smoke was inspired by the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes and Thurmond’s personal engagement with the work of Christian mystics.

“Ecclesiastes is all about the ephemeral nature of life and how everything that you pursue or accumulate or build in life at some point just gets blown away — and that everything is like smoke. And through sound, body and light, we create spectacles that kind of emerge and then disappear — like smoke,” said Thurmond.

While preparing for his solo performance as Pasquale at the Goat Farm’s SITE event last year, Thurmond spent time practicing in the current venue. He was inspired by the space to create a large-scale performance. Things quickly fell into place: He developed a written score, assembled a group of seven collaborating artists and secured support from the Goat Farm, as well as funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Nexus Fund through Atlanta Contemporary.

“While I was in here working, I was getting these visions for the piece that we’re now building. In a lot of ways, I find that the space itself is really dictating what each scene is and what the whole piece is as a whole. It felt really ripe for activation and performance,” Thurmond said.

For instance, one corner — naturally dark and turned away from light, with chains hanging down from the ceiling —  became the setting for a rave. A long and open hallway inspired the idea for a hall of mirrors to represent an interior psychological space.

The attention to space extends even to the finer details, such as costumes and set pieces. 

“We’re thinking about what colors to wear that complement it, wanting everything to be somehow harmonious with the space itself. Similarly, a lot of the set pieces are things that we found here, like big metal boxes, columns and lights — this kind of theater of necessity, where we were using what we had to make the spectacles that we wanted to share,” Thurmond said.

In turn, the audience members also are invited to respond to the space. In some scenes, the guests will be asked to stand and watch, like in a traditional theater experience. In others, the audience is invited to edit their own experience and to move around the space as if it is a sculpture gallery.

During one evening rehearsal, the cast is positioned around a dinner table, workshopping their final scene. They move around in a circle, holding hands as they dart into the center, breaking out into synchronized movements as they disperse outward. The choreography is set to Thurmond’s track “In The Light,” which is punctuated with joyful swells and upbeat pop with vocals that feel like they are moving, pointedly, in a direction while simultaneously contained in a vessel.

“We’ve just had this kind of reconciling family dinner. We were thinking of the scene as eternity — a kind of space outside of time, where we’ve just been wrestling with our material realities, and then pulled the curtain back. This is a space that’s beyond linear time and something more all encompassing,” he explained.

This rehearsal offered a small window into the creative process behind this performance. In just a few minutes, a jumping movement changes from upright to sprawling and performers shift between holding hands or loosening them into the air. Apparent through it all is their sense of comfort and command over the space, as they let it guide their improvisations.

Thurmond says he likes to think of art very expansively and enjoys merging different mediums, integrating sets, music and movement all together. He leads with his core of dance and choreographic training to help guide artistic experiments in other forms.

“There’s also a deep connection to the sense of flow that for me feels quite spiritual,” said Thurmond. “It feels like I’m trying to frame the whole work as God or the divine. This whole artwork is something that is coming through me and coming through us. And our job as artists is to open ourselves up to that thing, to be present for these ideas to come through.” 

The space is largely empty and sparsely decorated, but it feels undeniably charged with energy. In its liminality, it promises audience members opportunities to have unique and reflective encounters. And, in entering, they, too, will become participants in co-creation.

Smoke will take place at The Goat Farm on Saturday, April 18 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, April 19 at 5 p.m.

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Mitali Singh is a writer whose work has appeared in ArtsATL, The AJC, The Creek and The Emory Wheel. She is passionate about storytelling, the outdoors and exploring the intersections between the arts and culture. She received a B.A. in English & creative writing and environmental science from Emory University.