Douglas Dunn’s Garden Party is back for a return engagement (photo by Jacob Burckhardt)
GARDEN PARTY
Douglas Dunn Studio
541 Broadway between Spring & Prince Sts., third floor
September 6-10, $20 floor cushions, $25 chairs
www.douglasdunndance.com
This past April, Douglas Dunn + Dancers presented the world premiere of Garden Party at the company’s third-floor Soho loft studio. The sixty-minute piece is now returning for an encore run September 6-10; tickets are $20 for floor cushions or $25 for a chair.
Longtime Dunn collaborator Mimi Gross designed the colorful costumes and scenery, bathing the space in lushly painted trompe l’oeil walls and ceiling and a long horizontal mirror covered with pink, yellow, and green flowers, plants, trees, clouds, raindrops, and other natural elements. The work is performed by Dunn, Alexandra Berger, Janet Charleston, Grazia Della-Terza, Vanessa Knouse, Emily Pope, Paul Singh, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Timothy Ward, and Christopher Williams, with lighting and projections by Lauren Parrish, sound by Jacob Burckhardt, and preshow live music by guitarist and composer Tosh Sheridan.
The soundtrack consists of pop and classical tunes (Robert de Visée, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Bach, Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, more), birdsong, and poetry (by John Keats, Anne Waldman, Molière, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Milton, Stephanie Jacco, and others, read by Dunn, Waldman, Jacco, and Della-Terza). In an April twi-ny talk, Dunn noted, “The feel of this evening was clear to me the day the title hit me (about three years ago, the pandemic postponing the project). The lavish beauty of Mimi’s set completely fulfills my initial intuition . . . as if she’d read my dancing mind.”
Tickets are limited; the show sold out its April premiere, so don’t hesitate if you want to be part of this intimate experience.