Friday

Friday Installation thumbnail
Friday installation thumbnail
Friday installation thumbnail
Sarah Feb­braro thumbnail
paper air­planes thumbnail
DJ thumbnail
cake thumbnail
MC and DJ thumbnail
Cake thumbnail
Per­for­mance thumbnail
Kanye Wong thumbnail
Tay­lor Swift thumbnail
inter­pre­tive but­ter dance thumbnail
Friday Installation
Friday installation
Friday installation
Sarah Feb­braro
paper air­planes
DJ
cake
MC and DJ
Cake
Per­for­mance
Kanye Wong
Tay­lor Swift
inter­pre­tive but­ter dance

Stu­dents work on Friday’s kitsch-fab­u­lous installation/stage in school field

Friday’s installation/stage prac­tice run one week before performance

Detail of Friday’s installation/stage

Artist Sarah Feb­braro helps set up the stage for Friday

Stu­dents pre­pare paper air­planes by writ­ing instruc­tions on them. Lat­er these were thrown into the cafe­te­ria crowd dur­ing “I believe I can fly”

Artist Sarah Feb­braro dis­cusses music with Friday’s DJ

Stu­dents pre­pare the cake for the audience

Friday’s MC and DJ take the stage once it has been moved into cafeteria

The cake awaits dec­o­rat­ing and eating

Per­for­mance of John Mey­er song

Tay­lor Swift steals the floor from Kanye Wong

Friday’s Tay­lor Swift sings while anoth­er stu­dent holds her mal­func­tion­ing mic

Kanye Wong per­forms his inter­pre­tive but­ter dance

Fri­day was a per­for­mance facil­i­tat­ed by Toron­to artist Sarah Feb­braro in col­lab­o­ra­tion with grade 10, 11, and 12 stu­dents at “Fri­day Sec­ondary”.  On the first day of this project, Sarah asked stu­dents “What pop cul­ture are you cur­rent­ly obsessed with?” The answers were broad and includ­ed K‑Pop (Kore­an Pop Music), Har­ry Pot­ter, Tay­lor Swift, Cake Dec­o­rat­ing, Kanye West, Flash Mobs, John Mey­er, and Paper Air­planes with Instruc­tions.  These obses­sions became the basis for Fri­day, a mar­riage of Feb­braro’s talk-show aes­thet­ic and the well-known tra­di­tion of high school tal­ent shows.  Cen­tral to Fri­day was the desire to re-appro­pri­ate tal­ent shows and high school extra-cur­ric­u­lars and cre­ate a per­for­mance that would take place in an unex­pect­ed school space. Orig­i­nal­ly the per­for­mance was to take place on the high school field, for which the stu­dents made an up-cycled, kitsch-fab­u­lous, installation/stage with a prac­tice install­ment a week before the final performance.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the last con­trib­u­tor to the project was a thun­der storm, and the final show took place in the cafe­te­ria oppo­site the stage, where the stu­dents cheered, judged, ques­tioned, and par­tic­i­pat­ed in Fri­day. Per­for­mances includ­ed cov­ers of John Mey­er, Tay­lor Swift, and R. Kel­ly, as well as a flash mob dance to MJ’s Thriller. After “Kanye Wong” showed up to share his new love of danc­ing on but­ter, the show was cut short and Fri­day’s audi­ence rushed to dec­o­rate and eat cake — all part of the per­for­mance. Fri­day’s ped­a­gog­i­cal inter­ven­tions includ­ed a les­son on how to clean large amounts of danced-upon-but­ter off of a cafe­te­ria floor.