Tag Archives: abrons arts center

GOOD SAMARITANS

Rosemary (Rosemary Allen) and Kevin (Kevin Hurley) have some healing to do in GOOD SAMARITANS (photo courtesy New York City Players

Abrons Arts Center Playhouse Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Wednesday – Saturday through February 25, $25
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.nycplayers.org

“I will try my best not to be sinful,” the frumpy Rosemary (Rosemary Allen) sings at the beginning of experimental theater director Richard Maxwell’s revival of his absurdist black comedy Good Samaritans, which opened last night at Abrons Arts Center. Originally produced by Maxwell’s New York City Players in 2004 and earning an Obie for Allen, the ninety-minute play features five songs written by Maxwell; his trademark odd dialogue delivered in a dry, stylized manner that highlights its theatricality; and an existential plot that is delightfully mysterious. Rosemary, who is in her seventies, runs an urban rehabilitation center where the bedraggled Kevin (Kevin Hurley), a man in his fifties, suddenly shows up one evening, in desperate need of a bathroom. “I will make it my business to make your business my business,” the straightforward Rosemary tells him. “I don’t want you here. You don’t want to be here. That’s what we have in common. In a couple six months, we’ll see what you’re made of. . . . The twelve-step program, faith-teaching, and work therapy are to help the client reenter mainstream society.” Rosemary, who’s been working at the center for thirty-five years, is sure she can help him, because that is what she does. “You came to me. And I’m telling you. I’m the answer, the only answer you need,” she assures him. Soon they’re helping each other, in a rather unexpected way.

Kevin Hurley and Rosemary Allen reprise their original roles in Richard Maxwell’s revival of GOOD SAMARITANS (photo courtesy New York City Players

Maxwell (Isolde, The Evening) was looking through his previous work (he’s written twenty plays since 1997) when he decided to bring back Good Samaritans, the first time he has revived one of his plays. He believed that it “feels even more resonant in 2017,” and he has a point, with Americans more obsessed than ever with self-identity. “Where is your house? Where is your ID? You know? Why are you here?” Rosemary asks, but Kevin never reveals why he has been placed in the facility, allowing the audience not only to wonder but also to consider what sins of their own might be in need of rehabilitation. The superb acting relies on the intentionally emotionless delivery of lines, but the relationship between the two protagonists is actually filled with a passion that sucks you into their curious tale, which becomes even stranger whenever the characters break out into song, accompanied by guitarist James Moore and pianist David Louis Zuckerman. At the center of it all is a deep need for human connection of almost any kind, and when Rosemary and Kevin do connect, it’s both wildly unanticipated and gently touching. Original designer Stephanie Nelson’s set is brightly cold and antiseptic, a cinder-block cafeteria with long tables and one small window that is hard for the characters to look out of, as if they’re trapped in a kind of way station. (Nelson also designed the lighting and the costumes.) A longtime nurse, Allen seems born to play Rosemary, embodying the intake counselor with an offbeat glee that seems to hover right beneath the surface; meanwhile, Hurley (Sea Plays, Bad Boy Nietzsche!) is affecting as a man in search of meaning. Together they face love and fear, loneliness and desire in ninety captivating minutes. Maxwell (People without History, Neutral Hero), a Guggenheim Fellow who with the New York City Players has won five Obies, has a unique way of interpreting the world we live in, and he is thankfully being a Good Samaritan himself by giving us all another opportunity to see this splendid work.

WINTER 2017 PERFORMANCE FESTIVALS

Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt team up for A STUDY ON EFFORT at Invisible Dog Center as part of COIL festival

The always exciting winter performance festival season gets under way right after New Year’s, with a slew of popular programs occurring all over town and in multiple boroughs. PS122’s COIL 2017 festival, the last under artistic director Vallejo Gantner, consists of fourteen events, with a dozen performances, a sewing bee, and the Red + White Party. The Public Theater’s fourteenth annual Under the Radar fest includes twenty-one programs, centering on experimental music, theater, and dance, along with postshow discussions and the Incoming festival within a festival. The NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate the centennial of Thelonius Monk’s birth while also concentrating on social justice. Focusing on “socially and aesthetically marginal and subversive artists tearing at the boundaries of form and wrestling with the realities of identity,” American Realness was founded in 2010 by Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor and Abrons Arts Center in 2010, directly modeled after the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival; the eighth annual event comprises more than two dozen performances, readings, workshops, discussions, installations, and a party. The fifth annual Prototype festival, which presents cutting-edge opera-theater and music-theater, hosts seven productions, an anniversary party, panel discussions and talkbacks, and the Out of Bounds series of free performances in public spaces. Below are a handful of recommendations for each of the above January festivals.

COIL
Multiple venues
January 3-22
www.ps122.org/coil-2017

January 3, 4-7, 10-15
CVRTAIN, by Yehuda Duenyas, immersive virtual reality experience, 151 Gallery, 132 West 18th St., $10

January 5-8
Custodians of Beauty, by Pavel Zuštiak/Palissimo, dance-theater piece exploring beauty, La MaMa, the Downstairs, 66 East Fourth St., $20

January 7-10
Basketball, by Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, dance exploring past shames, Howard Gilman Performance Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $20

January 8
Umyuangvigkaq: PS122 Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee, by Emily Johnson/Catalyst, featuring breakfast, “This Is Lenapehoking: Countering Perceived Invisibility,” “Indigenizing the Future: The Continuance of Aesthetic, Invention, Ceremony,” “My Dad Gives Blueberries to Caribou He Hunts: Indigenous Process and Research as Ceremony,” and “Radical Love: Indigenous Artists and Our Allies,” Ace Hotel New York, 20 West 29th St., free with advance RSVP, 11:30 am – 6:00 pm

January 12-14
A Study on Effort, by dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith in collaboration with violinist Keir GoGwilt, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $20

Tania El Khoury’s GARDENS SPEAK give voice back to dead Syrian activists and protesters (photo by Jesse Hunniford)

UNDER THE RADAR
Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 4-15
publictheater.org

January 4, 6, 10
Erin Markey: Boner Killer, words and music by Erin Markey, directed by Ellie Heyman, starring Markey and Emily Bate, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, $25

January 6-9
Gardens Speak, interactive sound installation about ten deceased Syrian activists, by Tania El Khoury, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Abe Burrows Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

January 9
Incoming! They, Themselves and Schmerm, written and performed by Becca Blackwell, directed and developed by Ellie Heyman, the Robert Moss Theater at Playwrights Downtown, 440 Lafayette St., $25, 5:00 & 8:30

January 11, 12, 14, 15
Latin Standards, written and performed by Marga Gomez, directed by David Schwizer, Martinson Hall, the Public Theater, $25

January 12-15
Time of Women by Belarus Free Theatre, about a trio of women (Maryia Sazonava as Iryna Khalip, Maryna Yurevich as Natalya Radina, Yana Rusakevich as Nasta Palazhanka) fighting for a free and democratic Belarus, written by Nicolai Khalezin and Natiala Kaliada and directed by Khalezin, NYU Tisch School of the Arts Shop Theatre, 721 Broadway, $25

NYC Winter Jazzfest will celebrate one hundredth birthday of Thelonius Monk (photo by William P. Gottlieb)

NYC WINTER JAZZFEST
Multiple venues
January 5-10
www.winterjazzfest.com

January 6, 7
NYC Winter Jazzfest Marathon, multiple venues, $45-$55 per day, $80-$90 for both

Sunday, January 8
Thelonious Monk Makes a Hundred, panel discussion, the New School, Fifth Floor Theater, 55 West Thirteenth St., 3:00

Thelonius Monk 100th Birthday Improv Show, with Kris Davis, David Virelles, Shabaka Hutchings, Sam Newsome, Marc Ribot, Charlie Burnham, Erik Friedlander, Linda Oh, Trevor Dunn, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille, and Deva Mahal playing Solo Monk, Littlefield, 622 Degraw St., $20-$25, 8:00

Tuesday, January 10
Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra: A Concert for Social Justice, with special guest Geri Allen and arrangements by Carla Bley, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St., $30-$40, Social and Environmental Justice panel at 6:00, show at 8:00

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works at Abrons Arts Center as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

Meg Stuart will present an evening of solo works as part of American Realness festival (photo by Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker)

AMERICAN REALNESS
Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 5-12
americanrealness.com

January 5-7
An Evening of Solo Works by Meg Stuart, including XXX for Arlene and Colleagues and Signs of Affection, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 6, 7
Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, by Kimberly Bartosik / daela, duet for Joanna Kotze and Lance Gries, inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale sculpture, Gibney Dance, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, 280 Broadway, $15

January 6, 7, 10
Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church (s), solo by Trajan Harrell, first work in series, Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, $20

January 7, 8, 9, 10
Adult Documentary by Juliana F. May, piece for five dancers about trauma and form, Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, $20

January 8
In the Works: Dance in Process Resident Artists & Guests, with performances by Melinda Ring, Anna Sperber, Michelle Boulé, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Gibney Dance Company, Antonio Ramos, Katie Workum, Bjorn Safsten, Yanira Castro, iele paloumpis, Gibney Dance Choreographic Center, 890 Broadway, free, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

FUNERAL DOOM SPIRITUAL will have its New York premiere at National Sawdust as part of Prototype festival (photo by M. Lamar)

PROTOTYPE
Multiple venues
January 5-15, $25 unless otherwise noted
www.prototypefestival.org

January 5
Out of Bounds: Amirtha Kidambi, inspired by Nina Simone’s performance at the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:00

January 5-14
Mata Hari, composed by Matt Marks, directed and with libretto by Paul Peers, conducted by David Bloom, and starring Tina Mitchell, HERE, 145 Sixth Ave., $30

January 6
Out of Bounds: Leah Coloff, inspired by Patti Smith’s Kimberly and a set at CBGB’s, 60 Wall St. Atrium, free, 1:30

January 6, 7, 9
Breaking the Waves, New York City premiere of opera based on Lars Von Trier film, composed by Missy Mazzoli, directed by James Darrah, conducted by Julian Wachner, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, and starring Bess McNeill and Jan Nyman, NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Pl., $30-$75, 7:30

January 13, 14
Funeral Doom Spiritual, multimedia concert by composers M. Lamar and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix and librettists Lamar and Tucker Culbertson, with Lamar on piano and vocals, string arrangements by Hunt-Hendrix, and additional arrangements by James Ilgenfritz & the Anagram Strings, National Sawdust, 80 North Sixth St., $30, 7:00 & 10:00

ANNA KOHLER: MYTHO? LURE OF WILDNESS

Anna Kohler looks back at her life as both muse and model in MYTHO? at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Caleb Hammond)

Abrons Arts Center Experimental Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Through December 22, $25
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org

The beginning of Anna Kohler’s Mytho? Lure of Wildness is promising. In the tiny Experimental Theater at Abrons Arts Center, Kohler and Katiana Rangel, playing a younger version of the German-American performance artist, are both naked as Kohler recalls her days modeling at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. “How am I able to stand it?” she asks. “How am I able to stand that way for so long? I guess it’s because I’m so young. I am deemed desirable to be a permanent model because I have the ideal body shape.” Soon Rangel is posing in the art class as Kohler details a particular session when she made lengthy eye contact with one of the students, directly challenging the male gaze of artmaking and taking back control of her body, at least for that moment. And indeed, the first part of the show cleverly deals with aspects of aging, the creation of art, and the concept of woman as sensuous object, both muse and model. But it quickly devolves into chaotic self-indulgence, so when the opportunity arose during a set change, a handful of audience members went running for the exit. Developed at MIT, where Kohler, a ten-year veteran of the Wooster Group, is on the faculty, Mytho? turns into a bewildering muddle of didactic proclamations about Art (capitalization intended), incorporating Robert Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and Au Hasard Balthazar and Henri Matisse at work in the south of France. Rangel and Alenka Kraigher take their clothes off, Pyramid Club legend Hapi Phace plays a donkey and Matisse (among other characters), Adam Strandberg looks adorable, scents are sprayed overhead, everyone belly-dances, and AutomaticRelease (Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty) projects awkward live video on multiple screens. Director Caleb Hammond can’t find a way in to make any sense of it. And then, after nearly two hours, the cast serves everyone a cup of juice into which Kohler threw raspberries she had just pulled from the pitcher with her bare hands. We were thirsty, but we chose not to partake.

CROSSING THE LINE 2016

Jérôme Bel’s THE SHOW MUST GO ON will go on at the Joyce as part of FIAF’s tenth annual Crossing the Line festival

French Institute Alliance Française and other locations
Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
FIAF Gallery, 22 East 60th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
September 22 – November 3, free – $55
212-355-6160
crossingthelinefestival.org
www.fiaf.org

We can’t help but get excited for FIAF’s annual multidisciplinary fall festival, Crossing the Line, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. Every summer, we eagerly await the advance announcement of what they’ll be presenting, then scour the lineup for the most unusual events to make sure we see them. This year is another stellar collection of cutting-edge international dance and theater, beginning September 22 and 24 with screenings of concluding episodes seven, eight, and nine of Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s epic Life and Times at Anthology Film Archives ($11), along with a Thursday night party in FIAF’s Florence Gould Hall ($10) that begins with a screening of the eighth chapter of Kristin Worrall’s rather ordinary life, with the artists themselves serving up PB&Js. The festival features a special focus on French choreographer Jérôme Bel, who will be involved in four programs, beginning October 17 (free with RSVP) with a screening of his short biographical film on Paris Opera dancer Véronique Doisneau, followed by a discussion with Bel and Ana Janevski. Bel’s award-winning The Show Must Go On will go on at the Joyce October 20-22 ($36-$46), with Bel hanging around for a Curtain Chat after the 2:00 show on October 22. Bel will present the New York premiere of his controversial eponymous 1995 signature work at the Kitchen October 27-29 ($20) while also moving over to the Museum of Modern Art October 27-31 (free with museum admission) for Artist’s Choice: MoMA Dance Company, a site-specific piece for MoMA’s Marron Atrium that will be performed by members of the MoMA staff.

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Tenth annual Crossing the Line festival features special focus on breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen, including U.S. premiere of AUTARCIE (….): A SEARCH FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Breakdance world champion Anne Nguyen is making her U.S. debut with a pair of works: the free Graphic Cyphers will take place September 23 at Roberto Clemente Plaza in the Bronx at 2:00 and in Times Square September 25 at 2:30 and 4:30, while Autarcie (….): a search for self-sufficiency has its American debut September 29 to October 1 ($20) at Gibney Dance. “I seek to reconcile the peculiarities of hip-hop with demanding theatrical performance to question the place of human beings in the modern-day world,” Nguyen says; you can hear more from her at the October 1 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Artist’s Perspective” (free with RSVP) with fellow panelists David Thomson, Mohamed El Khatib, and Rokafella, moderated by George Emilio Sanchez. The UK’s Forced Entertainment, which is “interested in confusion as well as laughter,” will likely dish out a healthy portion of both at the New York premiere of Tomorrow’s Parties in Florence Gould Hall September 28 and 30 and October 1 ($20). From September 30 to October 2 ($35-$55), Venice Biennale lifetime achievement award winner Romeo Castellucci will deliver the one-man show Julius Caesar. Spared Parts, making the most of Federal Hall’s marble columns. This past June, dancer-choreographer Maria Hassabi gave an informal preview of her latest work, Staged, on the High Line; she will now bring the final piece down to the Kitchen, below the High Line, where it will be performed by Simon Courchel, Jessie Gold, Hristoula Harakas, and Oisín Monaghan October 4-8 ($20).

Romeo Castellucci will make his New York City debut channeling Julius Caesar at Federal Hall

On October 6-8 and 13-15 ($35), drag fabulist Dickie Beau will conjure up Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Richard Meryman at Abrons Arts Center for Blackouts. [Ed. note: All performances of Blackouts have been canceled because of unexpected travel circumstances.] Also on October 13-15 ($20), Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanaeur will perform the U.S. premiere of Rachid Ouramdane’s Tordre (Wrought) at Baryshnikov Arts Center; CTL veteran Ouramdane will take part in the October 15 artist talk “Towards Cultural Equity: The Institutional Perspective” (free with RSVP) with keynote speaker Patrick Weil, panelists Firoz Ladak and Zeyba Rahman, and moderator Thomas Lax. On October 25 (free with RSVP), Aaron Landsman will host Perfect City, in which a group of young people from the Lower East Side will gather at Abrons Arts Center and discuss what the future holds in store for them, particularly in their neighborhood. The festival ends on November 3 with My Barbarian’s Post-Party Dream State Caucus at the New Museum (free with RSVP), held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Audience Is Always Right.” Throughout the festival, you can check out Mathieu Bernard-Reymond’s “Transform” art exhibit in the FIAF Gallery, and Tim Etchells’s multichannel video installation “Eyes Looking” will be projected at 11:59 each night in Times Square as October’s Midnight Moment.

PERFORMANCE MIX FESTIVAL 2016

Michael Helland kicks off the thirtieth Performance Mix Festival with (photo by David Gonsier)

Michael Helland kicks off the thirtieth Performance Mix Festival with RECESS: DANCE OF LIGHT (photo by David Gonsier)

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
June 6-11, free – $20
212-598-0400
newdancealliance.org
www.abronsartscenter.org

The thirtieth Performance Mix Festival returns to its original home this week, presenting more than three dozen emerging and midcareer dance artists and companies in fifteen events at the Abrons Arts Center, celebrating the past while looking toward the future. Focusing on experimental, multidisciplinary works, the festival has also been held at such locations as Dixon Place, the Joyce SoHo, HERE, and Dance Theater Workshop. The 2016 edition of PMF opens June 6 with Michael Helland’s site responsive one-man live-sculpture show RECESS: Dance of Light, which promises to “recharge your batteries and combat the symptoms of neoliberal fatigue.” On June 7, “Path Breakers Create Ever-Evolving Worlds of Performance” consists of Michael Freeman’s It’s not that I have anything against living…, Headlong and the Riot Group’s Magic Wand, an excerpt from James & Jen | McGinn & Again’s a Gram & a Gone, and Johanna S. Meyer’s work in progress Handbuilt. On June 8, the free “Edgy NYC” brings together feminist performance and video by Susana Cook, Jess Dobkin, Rebecca Patek and T. L. Cowan & Jasmine Rault as Mrs. Trixie Cane & Her Handsome Cellist, and festival founder and director Karen Bernard. On June 9, “Typography, Images, Landscape, Heightened Drama” pairs Jil Guyon’s Desert Widow with GREYZONE’s Drift. On June 10, “Three Artists…Three Fantastical/Fanciful Perspectives on Performance” comprises Melinda Ring and Renée Archibald’s Renée vs the Rectangle, Paula Josa-Jones | Performance Works’ Speak, and Patti Bradshaw and Valerie Striar’s Flowers in Space. The festival concludes June 11 with “Three Genres of Improvisation: Contact Improvisation, Spontaneous Connections: Improvised Music, and Raise the Hoof: Tap,” with Patrick Crowley, Carly Czach, Rob Flax, Elise Knudson, Tim O’Donnell, and Sarah Young (contact improvisation), David Garland, Anaïs Maviel, and Roxane Butterfly (improvised music), and Jane Goldberg, Max Pollak, Brinae Ali, and Jennifer Vincent (tap). Among the other performers over the course of the festival are LAVA, Yasuko Yokoshi, Rachel Thorne Germond, Arthur Avilés, Emily Wexler, and Louise Moyes and the Daly Collective, who will deliver a free excerpt from If a Place Could Be Made: Kitty and Daniel Daly of St. Mary’s Bay Newfoundland, Had 12 Children, Six of Whom Were Very Tall and Six of Whom Had Achondroplasia, or Dwarfism.

TRAVELOGUES: SARAH SKAGGS, THE NEW ECSTATIC 2.0

Sarak Skaggs and Corin Kresge will perform THE NEW ECSTATIC 2.0 at Abrons Arts Center this week (photo by Pierce Bounds )

Who: Sarah Skaggs and Cori Kresge
What: The New Ecstatic 2.0
Where: Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St. at Pitt St., 212-598-0400
When: February 18-21, $20
Why: In 2013, Sarah Skaggs collaborated with Cori Kresge on The New Ecstatic, a duet set to Charles Ives’s “The Unanswered Question” and Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.” Skaggs, who founded Sarah Skaggs Dance in 1995, and Kresge will now bring an expanded version of the piece, renamed The New Ecstatic 2.0, to Abrons Arts Center February 18-21, examining traumatic and powerfully emotional out-of-body states following epic tragedies, partially inspired by Martha Graham’s Steps in the Street. Skaggs’s previous works include Paradise, Higher Ground, Dances for Disasters, and 9/11 Dance — A Roving Memorial. Skaggs and Kresge’s evening-length piece is part of the ongoing Travelogues series at Abrons, curated by Laurie Uprichard.

AMERICAN REALNESS / COIL — JILLIAN PEÑA: PANOPTICON

Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin mirror each other in Jillian Peña’s PANOPTICON (photo by Ian Douglas)

Abrons Arts Center, Experimental Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 9-17, $20
Festival continues through January 17
212-598-0400
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.ps122.org/panopticon

If the title of Jillian Peña’s Panopticon recalls nineteenth-century optical instruments, you’re on the wrong track. It’s French philosopher Michel Foucault who’s the real reference for the Brooklyn-based choreographer’s latest evening-length piece, making its world premiere as a dual presentation of the COIL and American Realness festivals at Abrons Arts Center. In the “Pantopticism” chapter of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault wrote, in reference to the arrival of plague in a town, “First, a strict spatial partitioning. . . . It is a segmented, immobile, frozen space. Each individual is fixed in his place. And, if he moves, he does so at the risk of his life, contagion or punishment. Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere.” Foucault goes on to discuss such concepts as observation, surveillance, quarantine, and purification, elements that Peña refers to directly and indirectly in Panopticon, a duet performed by Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin that can be seen as an extension of their collaboration on Peña’s Polly Pocket, which was part of American Realness in 2014. The Experimental Theater has been arranged so that there is one row of chairs on all four sides of the room. However, on the two short sides, there are an additional ten chairs, organized like bowling pins, with one chair pointing toward the center of the space, followed by rows of two, three, and four seats, creating confining gaps in all four corners. High on the wall in the middle of the two longer sides are slightly tilted boards covered in silver Mylar, offering distorted reflections of what is occurring down below. For nearly an hour, Albrecht and Champlin move in parallel spaces delineated by tape on the floor, as if mirror images of each other, though occasionally touching and breaking that plane, disrupting the effect in disturbing yet beautiful ways. In dry, monotone voices, they discuss happiness, separation, time, and isolation as they perform balletic moves. They get so close to audience members that tiny rips in their slightly different op-art-inspired costumes, designed by Christian Joy, are visible, although the dancers rarely make eye contact with the crowd.

Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin mirror each other in Jillian Peña’s PANOPTICON (photo by Ian Douglas)

Alexandra Albrecht and Andrew Champlin explore happiness, separation, time, and isolation in Jillian Peña’s PANOPTICON (photo by Ian Douglas)

Even though they are moving in and around some of the viewers, it is as if Albrecht and Champlin are in a world of their own, reciting text by Samuel Beckett and Tom Stoppard as well as original dialogue written by the two dancers and Peña, while subtle, ambient music by Atticus Ros, Brian Eno & Harold Budd, Max Richter, David Bowie, Wendy Carlos, and Rachel Elkind floats in the background. Meanwhile, a man in one corner is filming everything. The show was being promoted as “a solo and a work for 100 dancers,” a “kaleidoscopic” piece with video elements, but instead it’s an intimate, decidedly low-tech exploration of twinning and the relationship between performer and audience. As Foucault explained, “This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living beings, the sick and the dead — all this constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism.” There is a distinct architecture that pervades Panopticon, one that both frees you and holds you captive.