Neil Greenberg will present the world premiere of Betsy this week at La MaMa (photo by Frank Mullaney)
Who: Neil Greenberg, Paul Hamilton, Opal Ingle, Owen Prum
What: World premiere dance
Where: La MaMa’s Downstairs Theater, 66 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
When: November 12-14, 17-20, $10-$30
Why: “Betsy makes use of projected written text that situates the dance within a two-pandemic landscape of COVID and AIDS, and within the also-ongoing crisis of racism and white supremacy,” dancer and choreographer Neil Greenberg explains on the Kickstarter page for his latest piece, premiering November 12-14 and 17-20 at LaMaMa. “I’m working to expose the cultural rootedness of any performance material in the conditions of its production. The use of text simultaneously gestures toward the kind of meaning-making encouraged by language while also intervening to allow for other perceptual possibilities.” The work features Greenberg, Paul Hamilton, Opal Ingle, and Owen Prum, with an original score by James Lo and Zeena Parkins and lighting by Michael Stiller. A former member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company and dance curator at the Kitchen and currently on the dance faculty at the New School, Greenberg made his La MaMa debut in 1987 with MacGuffin, or How Meanings Get Lost.
“Betsy will engage with the phenomenon of performance itself, in a play with the multiple relational possibilities between performers and spectators, and between a work and its spectators,” Greenberg (Partial View, This) continues. “Betsy will be presented with audience surrounding the performance arena, each viewer necessarily experiencing the performance materials differently due to their distinct vantage point, enabling spectators to watch the dance, themselves, and each other as they watch the dance together.”