Please Don't Leave Me

Directed by Rosane Chamecki and Andrea Lerner
Performed by Maria Hassabi, Bryan Kepple, Andrea Lerner,
Sarah Michelson and Pedro Osorio
Music by Mario Vaz de Mello
Costumes by Nicolas Petrou
Set by Scott Pask
Lights by Lap-Chi Chu
Premiere in November 1998 at Teatro Fernanda, Montenegro -Curitiba, Brazil

"In frank and beautiful ways, these two Brazilian-born choreographers
reveal love in all its generosity and suffocating need. It's not about sex, it's about the complication of tenderness."
Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice, March 3, 1999

"Please Don't Leave Me" seductively explores the most fundamental and timeless subject of all: LOVE. As in their previous works, Chamecki Lerner is interested in the psychological state of a body. At this time, of a body in love.
Inspired by Roland Barthes' book, "A Lover's Discourse," the piece travels through a dictionary of emotions, questioning the duality of being the one "who loves" or the one "who is loved." The one who dreams of belonging, and at the same time, of being free. But in the unconscious of our minds sleeps that old fairy tale of the perfect encounter, the glass shoe which fits that "only one."

The sentimentality of love has been so discredited, that to expose those feelings became obscene. "Please Don't Leave Me" invades the desire of being totally consumed by love. A love that is, at the same time, free and intoxicated.

Chamecki Lerner's "Please Don't Leave Me" is their fourth evening-length piece. The work premiered in Brazil in November of '98, followed by the New York season in February at Performance Space 122, where it ran for 2 weeks. Through a grant from IBM, "Please Don't Leave Me" was part of a 45-minute documentary about ChameckiLerner, aired on National
Television in May 2000 in Brazil.

"Please Don't Leave Me" has been mainly supported by grants from Siemens through the Brazilian government tax exemption program and by Jerome Foundation and The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art.