Temitope Ajose and Leah Marojević performing Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II
on the opening night of her exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London)
Photo: Camilla Greenwell (12 June 2025)
I.
On Sunday, I went to see a performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (2025), created in close collaboration with Temitope Ajose [1], Leah Marojević [2], and Tyrone Isaac Stuart [3], which, as well as being an interesting work in itself, also served as the finissage to her solo exhibition Yellow Yellow Blue at Thaddaeus Ropac (London) [4].
The piece is the latest chapter in Rooney's developing tale of the fatal love between a male moth and a female bolas spider. But, before discussing this, I'd like first to make a few remarks on the title and, in particular, the word spin ...
II.
Spin - an Old English verb of Germanic origin meaning to draw out and twist fibres of material (including thin air) into thread.
It is, I think, one of those words that Heidegger would think of as elemental, i.e., one of those etymologically complex terms that reveal something fundamental about human being and existence; words that speak us rather than simply communicate information and ideas.
These days, the concept of spinning has entered into many areas of life and the word has taken on multiple meanings depending on context. But I like to think that when Rooney speaks of spinning down sky she refers us to the possibility of making artworks out of the blueness of the Greater Day, or perhaps stretching the very stuff of the heavens so as to send yellow stars spinning like Van Gogh.
Of course, if writers spin words into narratives and painters spin colours into artworks, then spiders do something equally amazing by spinning silk into webs. And, as mentioned, at the centre of Rooney's tale is an unusual member of the Araneidae family ...
III.
For those readers lacking a background in arachnology, a female bolas spider [5] is an orb-weaver that, instead of spinning a typical orb web, hunts at night by using one or more capture blobs consisting of a mass of spun fibre embedded in a sticky liquid on the end of a silk line, known as a bolas.
By swinging the bolas at passing male moths, she hopes to snag her prey rather like a fisherman snagging a fish on a hook (thus it is that they are sometimes also referred to as angling spiders). If, after half an hour, she has been unsuccessful, she will consume the bolas and start again.
On a bad night, she may only catch one or two moths; on a good night, six or seven. The female bolas spider, however, doesn't just leave everything to chance; she lures her favoured prey closer via the production of a scent that mimics the sex pheremones emitted by the female moth, driving the males mad with desire.
Having given a little bit of natural history by way of background, I'd like now to say something of the actual performance ...
IV.
Spin Down Sky II is a new dance piece developed especially for the exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac. It premiered last month on the opening night of Yellow Yellow Blue. [6]
I was disappointed to have missed it then, but I'm very glad to have seen it now and to have been further ensnared into Rooney's imaginative world, which, it seems, is shaped as much by movement as colour; i.e., a combination of choreography and chromatic chaos (which is why it makes perfect sense to both open and close the exhibition of paintings with a contemporary dance performance).
The sequence of movements and rhythmic articulations unfolding in a unique time and space, both natural and mythical, seemed to me to be cleverly thought out and excellently performed (with, I'm assuming, some degree of improvisation) by the dancers although, I have to confess, I wasn't quite sure who was the moth and who was the spider.
Arguably, however, as their bodies became increasingly entangled in a strangely erotic danse macabre, perhaps that's no longer an issue and binary distinctions around species, sex, life and death begin to curdle.
And speaking of blurred lines ...
The clothing worn by the two dancers had been hand-painted by Rooney, thus inviting us to think about the relationship not only between prey and predator but fine art and fashion; interconnected disciplines which often come together despite the efforts of some who would preserve the purity and status of the former and view the latter as lacking in high aesthetic value and cultural significance [7].
And then there was the excellent (if slightly too jazzy for my tastes) soundtrack provided by Stuart, with live sax improvisations on the night, obliging us to also consider the three-way relationship between colour, movement, and music.
V.
Ultimately, Spin Down Sky II matters because, even though a short piece, it allows us to "think through and move across established categories and levels of experience" [8], transporting us to a place where the most profound ideas and feelings live and rise up.
Via creative storytelling - i.e., an act of fabulation - Rooney allows us to step outside the gate and to understand something of the complex and shifting world of relationships - not just between a flying insect and an eight-legged spider, but between us and the natural world, us and art, us and one another - that is central to reality as a web of being and becoming.
Notes
[1] Temitope Ajose is a London-based dance-artist with an interest in myth, psychology and magic. Her creative process unfolds in the playful space that exists between the sacred and absurd. Whilst Rooney conceived and directed Spin Down Sky II, Ajose is credited as the choreographer.
[2] Leah Marojević is a Serbian/Montenegrin/Italian/British queer female independent artist, based in Berlin, whose practice spans dramaturgy, choreography, performance, rehearsal directing, writing, teaching, curation and mentorship.
[3] Tyrone Isaac Stuart is an interdisciplinary artist with over 12 years of professional experience in dance and music. He blends krump, contemporary dance, visual art, and jazz music in his work.
[4] Some readers may recall a couple of posts published last month inspired by this exhibition: click here and/or here.
[5] Immature female spiders and (the much smaller-bodied) adult males hunt without a bolas; simply positioning themselves on leaves and
grabbing whatever insects they can with their hairy front legs.
[6] The bolas spider and night butterfly characters were first explored over two performances of Spin Down Sky at Kettle's Yard (Cambridge), as part of Megan Rooney's first major solo exhibition Echoes and Hours (2024). To watch the full (20 minute) performance on 21 June, please click here. Or for a short (43 seconds) teaser, please click here.
[7] Historically, fashion has been regarded as a craft or applied art,
distinct from the more elevated practice of fine art.
This perception is rooted in the belief that fashion is frivolous, commercial, and transient, while fine art is profound, timeless, and
transcendent.
Thankfully, such idealistic stupidity is now no longer so widespread and many people acknowledge that fashion - particularly haute
couture and avant-garde designs - can be a powerful form of artistic
expression and that the very best runway shows are pure theatre; one thinks, for example, of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 1999 show and its finale featuring a model (Shalom Harlow) in a white dress, spinning round on a rotating platform, and being spray-painted by robots: click here to watch on YouTube.
[8] Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects (Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 4.
This post is for Tom Hunt, who kindly invited me to the performance of Megan Rooney's Spin Down Sky II (27 July 2025).
