John Jasperse & James McGinn, Kyle Abraham and Faye Driscoll

THURS JAN 6 . 10:00 PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Abraham
FRI JAN 7 . 9PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Driscoll
SAT JAN 8 . 3PM .  Jasperse/McGinn, Driscoll
SUN JAN 9 . 9PM . Jasperse/McGinn, Abraham

ABRONS ARTS CENTER, PLAYHOUSE

SERVING is a two-course meal; an evening of performance sampling short works and works-in-progress from some of New York’s most exciting choreographers. Entrée features John Jasperse and James McGinn’s Janitors of Lunacy, a mystical ritual dance/opera of poverty, along with a sneak-peak excerpt from Kyle Abraham’s Live! The Realest MC (Thurs, Jan 6 & Sunday, Jan 9) or Faye Driscoll’s forthcoming work snake, dog, dragon (Fri, Jan 7 and Sat Jan 8). Le Plat presents Miguel Gutierrez’s HEAVENS WHAT HAVE I DONE a contemporary aria for an unstable world.

JOHN JASPERSE/JAMES McGINN, Janitors of Lunacy

Two men and two trash cans, shrouded in darkness, mystery and ridiculousness. Janitors of Lunacy is a duet set to the music of the proto-punk chanteuse, Nico. Initially a model turned Warhol Factory Superstar, Nico was also partially deaf, thus accounting for her reputation of occasionally singing off key. The piece is part mystical ritual; part dance/opera of poverty; part homage to a golden age when art, politics, rock, and fashion first collided and when artistic subversion still held the promise of real social change; and part celebration of the power within lunacy and playfulness. Sensorial explorations of seemingly anti-sensual objects make a spectacle of the anti-spectacular, where ridiculous actions are seen as a practice leading towards mystical transformation.

KYLE ABRAHAM, Live! The Realist MC

Inspired by the duality of Pinocchio’s plight to be a “real boy”, Live! The Realest MC investigates gender roles in the black community and societal perspectives of the black man through hip-hop and celebrity culture. Accompanying this overlying theme of realness is the juxtaposition of live performance versus all things prerecorded, articulated through Abraham’s original hip-hop lyrics and his love for the mysteries a karaoke system can evoke.

FAYE DRISCOLL, snake dog dragon

snake dog dragon examines the poignant tension between beauty, power and desire. Driscoll, collaborator Jesse Zaritt and composer Brandon Wolcott will probe ‘beauty'; as it is manifested in the ineffable promise of romantic love; as a perpetual dangling carrot of attainment; as Dance, the art form; as myth, ritual, masculine/feminine blur of power; as the performance of dissolving selves. Driscoll asks, What is the power of real transformation? A snake shedding it’s skin versus the contemporary botox phenomenon. How do these actions express the same impulse?