FourLegged Melancholy is an exploration of our melancholic selves – the part of us that lives with the echo of what has been lost. It goes to a place where melancholy is not all sadness, but rather a complex state of being.

It is the story of two women in different times, in different parts of the world, both searching. One character is ‘La Goulue’, dancer and creator of the French Cancan; an enigmatic and controversial figure who has been inexplicably erased by history.  The other is ‘Saturnina’ a modern woman trying to reconcile the mixed messages of society:  Be independent, but show your man you need him.  Unable to cope, she makes a radical decision to sit in a wheelchair never to get up again.

Co-produced with Mud/Bone Collective, the piece is developed by Nettles Artists Collective through intense physical and literary research using “Collective Autonomy,” an original way of working where art is stripped of hierarchy and artists work collectively, without a director. The result is a very unique theater event comprised of two ‘solo’ pieces that circumvent each other.