While the majority of the art world appeared caught in the Art Basel craze last week, we were happy to brave the storm on a rare rainy night here in LA. We ventured to the Gagosian in Beverly Hills for the performances by Dan Colen with choreographer Dimitri Chamblas in the premiere of  At Least They Died Together  and  Carry On Cowboy.

Shaking off rain, we entered the gallery and were confronted by Colen and Dimitri who, decked out in full cowboy gear, remained posed on either side of the gallery, standing on circular mounds of dirt. Despite the growing audience, each stood stoically facing the gathering of curious viewers. It wasn’t long before Colen and Dimitri began their duet.

The first movement came rather abruptly, as one performer suddenly opened his eyes wide and jerked back, falling to the mound of dirt, face planted on the ground and body contorted in agony. The other remained standing, yet as one appeared to give their last breath, the other would then in shock, stagger back, performing his own various iteration of dying. This theatrical chain reaction display of demise was preformed over and over… and over. Feeding off of each other’s actions—without ever looking at each other for the entirety of the show—both threw their bodies to their deaths. Chamblas, the more seasoned dancer of the two, would sometimes break into grand and more technical movements associated with dance, pirouetting and jetéing in the mound of dirt. Despite stylistic divergence between the two performances, both artists gave it their all.

I honestly can’t recall which cowboy was “shot” first, but my interpretation was that the abrupt jerking back and collapse was imposed by a lethal shot from the pistol of an anonymous adversary. We as the audience couldn’t quite perceive this aggressor who existed just beyond out of sight in the backdrop of the Wild Wild West which was provided by Colen’s paintings for the exhibition: “High Noon.” The paintings now existed as a set, depicting landscapes reminiscent of scenes from the cartoon The Road Runner for our cowboy’s final moments.

The absurdity of watching the men implement their excessive amount of deaths was mesmerizing in its impossibly indulgent and redundant nature. Confided to individual dirt “stages,” by the end both Colen and Chamblas were disheveled, dirtied and sweaty. The cowboys weren’t the only ones tussled by the finale. By the end of the spectacle, the initial circular mounds of dirt were dispersed throughout the room and the air was filled with dust, which launched many a viewer into minor coughing attacks. Although quite comedic, the performance was one of real struggle.

The Q&A to follow was lead by curator and author Douglas Fogle, during which Chamblas and Cohen gave insight to their process and performance. Upon the Q&A stage, Chamblas and Colen were stripped of their cowboy characters, clean of dirt and grime—transformed from previous theatrical states. One would never have imaged these two subdued characters had just executed 60 minutes of leaps, lunges and rolls upon mounds of dirt for us to observe.

Once the audience was seated, Chamblas admitted that he and Colen did not actually know each other all that well. This came as a surprise after watching the duo’s initial hour of reacting to each other’s movements as if second nature. That is the beauty of dance; Chamblas explained with genuine excitement in his eyes, one becomes familiar through the choreography process. Throughout the performance there were moments where one laid in the dirt, face and body contorted while the other stood facing the audience in stillness. “Not moving is just another gesture,” Colen reasoned. This I most certainly found to be true. It was in those still moments were one cowboy laid with their face pressed in the dirt that I remained the most intrigued, despite the other who may have been twirling and échappéing about. Cohen seemed to summarize the performance by stating, “I’m looking for moments of smashing comedy and tragedy… existence is so full of that stuff.”

I couldn’t agree more cowboys, no matter how many times you are shot down; you gotta get back up on that horse.