In Context: Espæce

Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage

An enormous moveable wall splits and folds like a book. Five performers—three dancers, a soprano, and an actor—navigate this stunning monolith to create a shape-shifting tableau. Aurélien Bory’s playful, poetic work of physical theater is inspired by the life and work of writer-trickster Georges Perec, best known for his wordplay and droll wit. Using Perec’s Species of Spaces as a jumping-off point and diving into a physical riddle of arrivals and departures, presence and absence, Espæce destabilizes our expectations to moody and mischievous effect.

After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #espaece.

Program Notes

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Espæce (PDF)

Interview with Satyagraha director Tilde Björfors

A conversation between dramatist Magnus Lindman and director Tilde Björfors

Lindman: So, how much is a circus director enjoying opera?

Björfors: I have come to appreciate that Glass’ music is perfect circus music. There’s something about this sense of the ecstatic, that the music is continuously reaching new heights with minor tweaks that suit the circus we are making here. There are plenty of similarities between circus and opera. They are two incredibly virtuosic art forms. Both try to make the impossible possible and cross the physical and perhaps mental borders of what we humans are capable of doing. We have a center for weightlessness in our brain that develops in the womb as we float around. And it is activated when we see people flying. A physical sensation that we otherwise have forgotten about.

In Context: Satyagraha

Photo: Markus Gårder  

Cirkus Cirkör lends its signature acrobatic grace and wit to Philip Glass’ mesmerizing operatic account of Mahatma Gandhi’s experiments with civil disobedience in this new production from Sweden's Folkoperan. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

What's Home?

Geoff Sobelle’s HOME, in which a house is constructed, is at the BAM Harvey from Dec 6—10. Sobelle answered some questions from Christian Barclay.

Photo: Maria Baranova

What drew you to the idea of exploring the relationship between “house” and “home”? 

When I first starting thinking about HOME, I was on the heels of my last independent work, The Object Lesson (2014 Next Wave). I was looking for a subject that everyone could relate to. No matter where you’re from or your current situation, I would imagine that just about everyone is concerned with their housing and their sense of “home.”

In Context: Limits

Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkör offers an acrobatic exploration of an EU in flux, equal parts high-flying spectacle and trenchant critique. Context is everything, so get closer to the production through our series of curated links, videos, and articles. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #CirkusCirkör.

Circus—an inclusive art form

Honorary Ringmaster Isabella Rossellini at the Big Apple Circus in 1978.
Courtesy BAM Hamm Archives.

by Chris Tyler

The circus is many things: an experience, a practice, a lifestyle, an education, a culture. But, above all else, it is an inclusive art form. “There’s no exclusion,” remarked Duncan Wall, co-founder and former national director of Circus Now, during a 2013 talk on contemporary circus. “Audiences of any class, race, or culture can enjoy the form and participate in it.” For denizens of a visual society, there’s something uniquely accessible about the circus and its focus on the physical body. People are not shut out from understanding the experience.

Yet, “because circus enters our lives so early in our lives as children...we become fixed in our thinking” about the form, as noted by Executive Producer Joseph V. Melillo in the Beyond Physical Theater podcast (embedded below). The term itself summons images of elephants, clown cars, and bombastic ringleaders alongside the requisite smells of popcorn and cotton candy. But the circus itself is not codified—it is a non-verbal bodily practice. It’s a vehicle for expression, a delicate marriage of risk and virtuosity. It’s theater, dance, music, sport, and visual art—and the sky is (quite literally) its limit. Circus is an inclusive art in this sense then, too, in that it readily incorporates multiple forms while simultaneously blurring genre boundaries.

Exceeding Limits

By Susan Yung

Cirkus Cirkör performs Limits, a physical theater piece about confronting and soaring above boundaries, at the Howard Gilman Opera House from June 7—10. We spoke with Cirkus Cirkör artistic director Tilde Björfors and set designer Fanny Senocq about the piece.

Anton Graaf in Limits. Photo: Mats Båcker

Was there one moment or news event that inspired you to make Limits?

Tilde Björfors, artistic director, Cirkus Cirkör: When I read about the drownings near Lampedusa in 2013, it turned my life upside down and I needed to know more. We as members of EU guard our borders, and the consequence for thousands of migrants whose only chance to survive is a dangerous journey with life at stake. So I created Borders, the first of a trilogy on circus, risk, and migration. Limits is the second part.

In fall 2015, I tried to welcome displaced people in a spirit of common humanity. I was involved in establishing a transitional housing facility and opened my home to hundreds of boundary-crossers, every encounter a personal tragedy. I became aware of limitations within society and myself. Several times, I felt I couldn’t take in any more; there was no room. But every time, a vulnerable soul showed me there was still hope. Suddenly there was room for more! Both our hearts and our brains have an innate capacity for growth.

It’s shocking to watch Europe close borders when our circus has dedicated 20 years to pushing boundaries. The word “circus” is often used disparagingly, but I think the opposite is true—the world should practice more circus!

In Context: Plexus

French physical theater maverick Aurélien Bory takes Japanese dancer Kaori Ito, entangled in a dense field of 5,000 black nylon wires, as both muse and instrument. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #AurelienBory.

Playing with Theater

Photo: Géraldine Aresteanu

by Yoann Bourgeois

Minuit (“Midnight”) is a theater show designed by a circus artist. This is an important
distinction; the show plays with the very notion of theater as a concept and as a
physical space.

The show reinvents itself according to the particularities of each theater, with the stage
stripped down to reveal the technical rigging behind it, as if the stage itself is the set. “Playing with the theater” is therefore true in the most literal sense. The emptiness of the space brings the ensuing acts into sharp relief as objects accumulate and pile atop one another on stage. We are left at the blurred boundary between performance and creation. The stage becomes a climbing frame whose composition is part of the show.

The idea of “playing” bridges the entirety of my work. It’s the starting point for my creative process, finding out how to play together. I use the word “play” in the widest sense possible. I like its mechanical definition in French: the space between two objects that allows them to move.

On a deeper level, the idea of play has led me to explore, construct, and deconstruct the physical forces that act upon us—in particular the concept of “non-action,” a balancing of forces whereby a performer reacts to the forces upon them without initiating movement themselves. There is powerful dynamism in that struggle.

What these ideas have in common is that they render a suspension point perceptible. For a juggler, the suspension point is that brief moment when an object thrown in the air arrives at the summit of its arc before it falls. That’s what I’m looking for: the absolute present of that moment. It’s the ideal place—the peak before the fall, that moment of weightlessness, the moment when everything is possible.

Minuit, part of the Brooklyn-Paris Exchange, plays the BAM Fisher through Saturday, October 8. The show is currently at capacity, but standby tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis before each performance.

In Context: Minuit

Acrobat Yoann Bourgeois and his dazzling collaborators capture the body’s ineffable moment of weightlessness while in motion in this series of vaudevillian vignettes. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BourgeoisMinuit.

2016 Next Wave Festival—Shifting Borders

Company Wang Ramirez in Monchichi. Photo: Morah Geist, courtesy of Jacob's Pillow Dance

By Susan Yung

The 2016 Next Wave dives into new genre amalgamations and forms that have been in flux throughout the Festival’s 33-year history. Collaboration is prominent, notably in the Brooklyn/Paris Exchange, which underscores the frequent comparison between creative nerve centers Brooklyn and the Left Bank, with exchange runs by four inventive troupes—two each from Brooklyn and Paris. Dance is robustly represented by nine exhilaratingly disparate companies. Theater includes searing reboots of classics, as well as five of the Bard’s plays rolled into one, plus inventive productions that push known limits. Music also defies standards with compositional daring and physical risk-taking.

In Context: La Verità

Contemporary circus maverick Daniele Finzi Pasca conjures a lush vaudevillian dreamscape in La Verità, an acrobatic homage to Salvador Dalí, coming to BAM May 4–7. Context is everything, so get even closer to the show with this curated selection of related articles, sounds and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #LaVerita.

Dalí in New York

By Anna Troester

Salvador Dalí made his mark across 20th-century Europe and the US with his unique body of work and eccentric personality. Best known for his Surrealist paintings—at once evocative, dreamlike, and bizarre—Dalí immersed himself in writing, sculpture, and graphic arts, as well as architecture, jewelry, and set design. He collaborated with well-known artists in the film, theater, photography, and fashion worlds, including Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, and Walt Disney.

The Spanish artist spent eight years in New York City during the 1940s, where he engaged with new ideas, worked with high-profile American artists and institutions, and heavily influenced a city that was growing into an international art center. During this time, Dalí collaborated with the choreographer Leonide Massine on the ballet Mad Tristan, inspired by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The artist’s striking hand-painted original backdrop is featured in Daniele Finzi Pasca’s La Verità, a physical theater tribute to Dalí himself, at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House May 4—7. After the jump, peruse some of Dalí’s activities in New York of the 1940s, with an emphasis on the theater.

In Context: Opus

Opus, from the dazzling Australian troupe Circa, comes to BAM November 4. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #CircaOpus.

BAM Blog Questionnaire: Nathan Boyle of Circa

Nathan Boyle

Australian troupe Circa makes its BAM debut next week with Opus, a jaw-dropping combination of physical feats accompanied by live music by the Debussy String Quartet. Performer Nathan Boyle spoke with us about the piece, its challenges, and more.


How did you get involved with Circa? What is your experience in physical theater?

I saw CIRCA, one of Circa's shows at the Sydney Opera House in 2008. I didn't know what to expect; I knew it was contemporary circus and that was it. After watching that show, I immediately thought "I will work for this company one day." After finishing my Bachelor in Circus Arts in 2010 at NICA (the National Institute of Circus Arts), I was immediately hired by Circa and have been with the company ever since.

How is Opus different from what you’ve done in the past? What can the audience expect to see from you during the performance?

Firstly, the music is live. We have the amazing Debussy String Quartet accompanying us throughout the entire show. This is the first time I wasn't performing to recorded music, so it took a while for me and the other performers to adapt to the slight changes in tempo from night to night as it’s performed live. It’s organic and varies slightly on how the musicians play on the night. The audience can expect to see an absolute fusion of acrobatics and classical music. The quartet isn't just shoved to the back of the stage—they move throughout us, sometimes blindfolded, sometimes with assisted acrobatic lifts, all while continuing to play the music from memory. You have to see it to believe it!

Martin Zimmermann, hero in a paradoxical world

Photo: Augustin Rebetez

By Thomas Hahn

Martin Zimmermann is that phenomenally pliable mime around whom twist and wind the absurd frescoes and circus disciplines of the Zimmermann & de Perrot duo. After having recently roused the delighted audience to tumultuous applause at the Théâtre de la Ville, the mime with a ballet dancer’s body is already back in Paris with a solo to say "Hallo" at the Théâtre de la Ville – Les Abbesses.

Their last piece remains indelibly fixed in our memory: Hans was Heiri, performed in Théâtre de la Ville in 2012 and again in 2013. Zimmermann has now created his first solo. But what does "solo“ actually mean? Just as in the previous blockbusters, the stage setting here does not simply serve as decoration, but rather takes part as a full-fledged actor. In constant motion, it is an ally of the director, but a formidable adversary for the figure.

Poetry of the Absurd—An Interview with Hallo's Martin Zimmermann

Somewhere between Beckett and Buster Keaton, Martin Zimmermann's Hallo—coming to the BAM Harvey Theater on October 15—pits shape-shifting human against animate architecture, teetering on the threshold between collapse and order. One year ago, Gwénola David sat down with Zimmermann to learn more about the broken walls, breached skylights, and sculptural echoes of his creative mind.

Hallo's Martin Zimmermann. Photo: Augustin Rebetez

In Context: Hallo

Swiss choreographer Martin Zimmermann’s acrobatic one-man show Hallo comes to BAM on October 15. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #HalloMartin.

Blurring Circus Frontiers

Tabac Rouge's dynamic ensemble. Photo: Richard Haughton

By Roy Gómez-Cruz

The fifth creation by the Compagnie du Hanneton, Tabac Rouge, directed and choreographed by virtuoso performer James Thierrée, is the first of several physical theater performances in the 2015 Next Wave Festival at BAM. The piece, which opens in the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House tonight, explores the porous boundaries between theater, dance, and contemporary circus. With a cast of world-class dancers and high-level acrobats, Tabac Rouge represents the erratic desires of a capricious tyrant through the mesmerizing and whimsical physicality of his people.

In Context: Tabac Rouge

Physical theater virtuoso James Thierrée's Tabac Rouge comes to BAM on September 30. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of articles and videos related to the show. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought below and by posting on social media using #TabacRouge.