PERFORMER COLLABORATORS: Maggie Cloud, Marc Crousillat, Burr Johnson, Heather Lang, Stuart Singer and Claire Westby

ORIGINAL MUSIC COMPOSITION: John King

ADDITIONAL MUSIC: Javier Peral, Nino Rota & Émile Vacher

LIGHTING DESIGN: Lenore Doxsee

STAGE MANAGER: Sarah Lurie

COSTUME DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION: Baille Younkman

 

Description:

Remains is an evening-length work by choreographer John Jasperse featuring six dancers and an original score by John King. This work is a rumination on our existence in time. It explores how the remnants from our actions remain in our wake creating a context for the future. Jasperse mines his own legacy and lineage, sampling fragments and phrases from the radical practices of his forbears while repurposing them within the contemporary present. By referencing how the body has been thought about in select histories of art and dance, he constructs an altogether new vision of our as-yet-unimagined future that allows for the possibility of hope.

A [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.  –  On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin, 1940

Performances:

WORLD PREMIERE: American Dance Festival (Durham NC), July 5-7, 2016

NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE: Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival (NYC), September 21-24, 2016

Press:

Re-envisioning Shreds of Memory  – Deborah Jowitt, DanceBeat 9/25/16

Dance That Playfully Brings Art History to Life  – Brian Seibert, NYTimes 9/22/16

John Jasperse, Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY – ‘Enchanting’ – Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times 9/22/16

‘Remains’ Review: Using Art History to Shape Bodies – Robert Greskovic, Wall Street Journal 9/27/16

Forward and backward and forward with John Jasperse – Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Infinite Body 9/22/16

A Spectacle, a Smorgasbord, a Show: John Jasperse’s Remains at BAM – Rachel Rizzuto, Bachtrack 9/23/16

John Jasperse’s ‘Remains’ at Next Wave – Gus Solomons Jr., Solomons Says 9/26/16

John Jasperse Hopes ‘Remains’ Lasts After the Dancing Stops  – Gia Kourlas, NYTimes 9/20/16

John Jasperse Somehow Stops Time While Moving It Forward in Remains – Michaela Dwyer, Indy Week 7/12/16

Video:

Video – Making ‘Remains’: BAM 2016 Next Wave Festival features an interview with John Jasperse and footage from rehearsals in preparation for the premiere of ‘Remains‘ at the BAM 2016 Next Wave Festival September 21-24, 2016.

Video –  ‘Remains’ in Development features Remains rehearsal footage and an interview with John Jasperse and from a developmental residency at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, March 27-April 10, 2016

Project Funders: 

Remains is co-commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American Dance Festival. The work was made possible by support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts; the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; the James E. Robison Foundation; the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Trust; and the Harkness Foundation for Dance.

Portions of the work were developed in residencies including a Creative Development Residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival with support from the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award Initiative; a BAC Space 2015 Residency as the Martha Duffy Resident Artist at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York, NY; the 92 nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center Artist-in- Residence program; the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; and through DANCECleveland as part of the Pilot Residencies for the establishment of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron made possible through the generous funding from both The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Doris Duke CharitableFoundation. The development of the work culminated in a Production residency at The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College funded by the New England Foundation for the Arts’; National Dance Project, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Touring performances of Remains are made possible in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project Touring Award, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The 2016-17 activities of John Jasperse Projects are supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Doris Duke Artist Awards.