A performance

Kaitlyn Dada
March 2023

Champagne Cardigan Tied with Invisible String Served on Willow

Performance space is confined to a roasting pan on a table.  Few ingredients are visible within the frame.  The performer is never visible, other than her hands and arms animating  the ingredients.

Today, I’m going to show you how to make champagne cardigan tied with invisible string served on willow.

While the performer reads the ingredients, she makes the ingredients visible.

Ingredients:

1 can black lipstick
3 cups cardigan, separated
1 teaspoon high heel
1 kiss, to taste
½ tablespoon Levis
1 cup cold water
1 pinch book
½ cup yogurt
Liberal amount willow leaf
3 liters champagne, divided
1 picture peel

Tools:

6 feet invisible string
1 plate, preferably license
1 pair of scissors

Directions:

Step One: Make the cardigan dough.

Knead 2 cups cardigan into dough.

Performer kneads 2 cups cardigan like dough. The cardigan has been pre-measured.

Add 1 cup cardigan.
Divide dough into three separate balls.
This might hurt a little.

Performer divides dough into three separate sections and rolls each section into a ball.

Mark any bruises with a pinch of book. From Shakespeare’s “Sonnet II”:

Performer opens book and reads.

“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gaz’d on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer, ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.”

Step Two: Prepare the invisible string.

Kiss ½ tablespoon Levis. Now I am going to show you how this is done as it is something you get better at with practice. Take one can black lipstick. Lipstick is the consistency of butter and so acts as a combining agent like butter, but unlike butter, lipstick is allowed on the Whole 30 diet.

Performer draws kisses onto Levis with black lipstick.

Dance with your Levis. So you see now we have three separate cardigan-dough balls, Levis, black lipstick, and a pinch book. These together make a nice company.

Performer puts the six items into two lines of three. She switches the placement of objects two at a time, similar to a line dance.

When they have finished dancing, kiss Levis again, if necessary. My Levis look like they need a little more kissing. But you don’t need to watch this.

Performer blacks out the video screen. In the darkness, she removes the black lipstick and pinch of book from pan.

Pour Levis over cardigan dough. Run invisible string under cold water.

Performer submerges invisible string in a cup of cold water.

Let the invisible string haunt you.

Performer unwinds a skein of invisible string in silence.

Double check the expiration date of the invisible string. Stand with the invisible string in the light to check its freshness. The string should appear tight and curly, not limp. This string, as you can see, is fairly crunchy, exactly as it should be.

Step Three: Set the stage with willow leaves.

Take the plate, preferably license, but a contem-plate will do as well. Tie the invisible string to the plate. Piece together your identity by telling your life story.

Performer shares intimate details of naming without much emotion.

My parents wanted me to be a boy, and they picked out the name Andrew Stephen Chisholm. They didn’t know what they wanted to call me if I were a girl, but they finally settled on Kaitlyn Michelle (K-a-t-e-l-y-n); then my dad spelled my name wrong on the birth certificate.

I hated the name Kaitlyn growing up; I thought it sounded exactly like the name a witch would have, like the witch I was afraid would come kidnap me while I slept at night, so I went through a phase when I asked everyone to call me KC.

By the time I had my first boyfriend, I was going by Kaity (K-a-i-t-y), but I asked people to stop calling me Kaity when I learned his ex was also named Katie; my parents never caught on.

That boyfriend began calling me Kait (K-a-i-t), which I liked until we broke up, but every boyfriend since then has ended up calling me Kait.

I worked two summers at a camp in Virginia, waking up at 5 to spend all day with kids ages 4 to 13 outside in the hot sun in close proximity to bugs and dirt, and every morning when I showed up at the office for my necessary coffee, the office administrator called me Sunshine.

I worked as a barista at Starbucks my first year in Chicago and again while I lived in Roanoke. I’ve never felt so valued as the day I went downtown to view Christmas trees in a hotel, and I heard this little girl call out, “Mom! It’s the coffee lady!”

Cut an invisible string in two.

Performer cuts one string.

Rub the cardigan dough with healing, sitting with the dough, even if it hurts.

Performer rubs dough like a spice rub on meat.

Silently sleep. It is time to be brave with yogurt. Dollop ½ cup yogurt on top of cardigan dough.

Performer dollops yogurt in a line down cardigan dough, like buttons.

Step Four: Drizzle with champagne sauce.

Drink a sip of champagne. Drink another sip if necessary. Who am I kidding?  It is always necessary.

Performer drinks two sips of champagne.

Pour 1 liter champagne over dough.

Performer pours 1 liter champagne over dough.

Work the champagne into the dough. Keep the dough slightly soupy.

Performer kneads champagne into dough with bare hands.

I’m going to splash a little more champagne onto my dough.

Performer splashes more champagne onto dough.

Stage willow leaves beneath and around the cardigan dough.

Performer tucks willow leaves beneath and around dough.

Sprinkle with humor. Tell a joke.

Performer tries to tell a joke and make it land.

Two single women approach the open bar at a wedding. One woman says to the other, “Drinks are on me today.” The other woman replies, “No drink for me. My life is already full of champagne. Without the cham.”

Walk through the champagne puddle with ½ teaspoon high heel.

Performer uses one high heel to slowly crush the concoction in the roasting pan while reading the monologue about walking women.

The following are quotations from “Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility” by D. Heddon and C. Turner, 2012.*

“Walking is an art. There is an art to walking, especially when we consider the invisibility of women walking and the canon of walking that creates our own cultural expectations of gender performance, (for example, the ‘slut walk’). Walking is an act of heroic resistance to norms and is associated with political freedom. Space is a constant, ongoing activity in which bodies are active and implicated. It is through rewalking, like rewriting, that original stories emerge. We are not going from A to B but are exploring the world from moment to moment, a dance of back and forth.”

Pour another liter champagne over cardigan dough. Watch the champagne make rivers.

Performer pours another liter champagne over dough.

Bake the cardigan dough for a lifetime at 350. Leave the dough to bake. As they do in cooking shows, I have another pan prepared, which I will show you. The nice thing about this recipe is the leaf never loses its color.

Performer removes the roasting pan from the frame and brings another pan into the frame, this roasting pan has been baked for a lifetime at 350.

Before serving, grate some picture peel onto the cardigan dough as a garnish.

Performer shows an old picture, presumably of her as a child, to the audience. Then she peels it in pieces as a garnish.

Pour one more liter champagne over the dough.

Performer pours another liter champagne over dough.

Thank you for making this recipe with me today. I hope you enjoyed our time together as much as I did and as I will continue to as I indulge in this dish one mouthful at a time.

I highly recommend pairing this meal, champagne cardigan tied with invisible string served on willow, with of course, another glass of champagne.

And I hope you will join me for my next video when we will make together Bang Bang Bluebird in a Jar with a side of Lonely Penguin Hearts.

*Deirdre Heedon & Cathy Turner, Walking Women: Shifting the Tales and Scales of Mobility, Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 22, 2012. Website →

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Kaitlyn Dada is a performer utilizing documentation to embrace humanity. She began as an actress but most recently fell in love with performance art while earning her MFA at SAIC. Her heart belongs to her husband who has planted her roots deep with him in the outskirts of Chicago.