WHEN 1+1=1
Choreographer Jonah Bokaer And Visual Artist Anthony McCall Collaborate On World Premiere Of ‘ECLIPSE’ At The New BAM Richard B. Fisher Building, September 5-9
JonahBokaerAnthonyMcCall/AnthonyMcCallJonahBokaer. So uniquely interknit is the creative collaboration between 30-year-old choreographer Jonah Bokaer and 66-year-old visual artist Anthony McCall in the making of “ECLIPSE,” their crediting could be fused. Celebrating a double first, the world premiere of “ECLIPSE” will inaugurate the BAM Fisher, September 5-9.
While renowned for his sprawling and wildly imaginative outdoor multimedia installations, “ECLIPSE” marks McCall’s first foray into theatrical design. For “ECLIPSE,” he has created an installation comprised of a slanting grid of 36 hanging bulbs that hovers above the stage space. With their heights staggered and their soft glow timed to subtly change every 14 seconds, the lights appear, like the dancers below, to create constantly shifting avenues. McCall’s set recalls his “Fire Cycles,” (1972-1974) in which he systematically ignited quantities of fuel positioned according to a grid imposed on a landscape. The spacing and timing of the “fires” were detailed on “scores.”
Using a cast of four performers, Bokaer’s 60-minute dance — alternately contemplative, quietly erotic, gently forceful, and ever-surprising — is staged to suggest close-ups, long shots, and multiple points of view associated with the cinema. The dancers’ virtuosic concentration and their sculptural shifting moves continually redefine the stage space below, while the alternating lights redefine the space above. An understated magic permeates their dialogue.
The changes in the timing and varied sounds of the accompanying sound design, including that of a softly whirring film projector, a landing helicopter, and the hushed rumble of a passing train, were determined by McCall to both accompany the dance and to signal the change between each of its four sections. The sound designer is David Grubbs.
Viewers will be seated on all four sides of the stage. The sight and sound of “ECLIPSE” changes according to where each individual audience member is seated.
PERFORMANCE TIMES
September 5 at 8:00pm (invitation only)
September 6–7 at 7:30pm
September 8 at 7:30pm & 9:30pm
September 9 at 3:00pm
ARTIST TALK
September 7 at 6:00pm
(free for same-day ticket holders).
Where To Go
Tickets are available at www.bam.org or by calling (718) 636-4100. The BAM Fisher is located at 321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217.
Artist Bios
JONAH BOKAER is an international choreographer and media artist whose collaborations with artists and architects integrate design and choreography. Bokaer began his own choreographic work in 2002, and has since been acknowledged with numerous honors and prizes, most recently the Prix Nouveau Talent Chorégraphie by the Société des Auteurs & Compositeurs Dramatiques (Paris), the Jerome Robbins Special Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), and Crain’s NY Business “40 Under 40” (all awarded in 2011). In 2008-2009 Bokaer became the first dance artist to be appointed a Young Leader of the French American Foundation. He led a group of choreographers in the formation of Chez Bushwick (2002), and later co-founded CPR – Center for Performance Research (2008), a 4,000 square foot LEED green arts facility in Williamsburg. Bokaer’s upcoming dance “CURTAIN” will have its world premiere at the 2012 Festival d’Avignon, July 20–22 & 24–26. It will receive its U.S. premiere this summer at the 80th Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, August 1–5. “Fifth Wall,” a dance Bokaer choreographed for an app designed by Abbott Miller, was released by 2wice Arts Foundation in June. www.jonahbokaer.net.
ANTHONY MCCALL was born in 1946 in St. Paul’s Cray, England. He has lived and worked in Manhattan since the early 1970s. McCall is known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with his seminal “Line Describing a Cone,” in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space. Occupying a space between sculpture, cinema, and drawing, his work’s historical importance has been internationally recognized in such exhibitions as “Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964–77” at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001–2), “The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies” at Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003-4), “The Expanded Eye” at Kunsthaus Zurich (2006), “Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006–7), “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Projected Image” at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2008), “The Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s,” Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008), and “On Line,” Museum of Modern Art (2010–11). Most recently, in February 2012, McCall’s films were the subject of a symposium and exhibition at The Film Studies Center of The University of Chicago. McCall’s work has also been exhibited at, among other venues, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004), Tate Britain, London (2004), Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France (2006), Musée de Rochechouart, France (2007), SFMoMA (2007), Serpentine Gallery, London (2007–8), Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009), Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (2010), Sprueth Magers/Ambika P3, London (2011), and Serralves, Porto (2011). An exhibition of recent solid-light works, “Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture,” is currently running at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. McCall is in the process of completing an Arts Council England/Cultural Olympiad sculpture commission to realize his Column in North-West England: a spinning column of cloud that rises vertically from the surface of the water into the sky.
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