Trajal Harrell
Antigone Jr. ++/ Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (Plus)
SUN JAN 11, 1:00 PM + 7:00 PM
Run time: 50 minutes
RONALD FELDMAN GALLERY
31 Mercer Street / FREE / RSVP: AmericanRealness@gmail.com
Antigone Jr. Plus Plus is the PLUS size in Harrell’s acclaimed Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church series. In American and English naming tradition, a junior (jr.) is the son of a father with the same name. Thus, with Antigone jr., the New York choreographer Trajal Harrell purposely scales down Sophocles’ tragedy to playwright’s first scene depicting the relationship between Antigone and her sister Ismene; and their tragic fate.
Antigone Jr. confronts the postmodern antagonism against tragically dramatic dance epitomized by Martha Graham’s mythological Greek dramas by presenting this contemporary dance version of Sophocles’ “Antigone”. By imagining a theoretical meeting between Voguing and Post-modern dance, much of Yvonne Rainer’s 1965 “No Manifesto” is put into crisis. Most of the no’s become definite maybe’s: maybe to spectacle, maybe to transformations and magic and make-believe, maybe to the glamour and the transcendency of the star image, maybe to the heroic, maybe to involvement of performer or spectator, maybe to style, maybe to trash imagery, maybe to camp, maybe to seduction of the spectator by the wiles of the performer, and maybe to moving or be moved. The only thing we know for sure is yes to the heroic and we’re adding yes to the tragic.
Here we have Antigone Jr “plus” a surprise additional fifteen-minute epilogue.
Trajal Harrell’s work has been presented In New York and the U.S. at many venues including Crossing the Line Festival, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, TBA Festival- Portland, Walker Arts Center-Minneapolis, American Realness Festival, ICA Boston, Danspace Project, DTW, P.S. 122, Cornell University, Colorado College, Philadelphia Live Arts and Los Angeles’ RedCat Theater. His work has been presented internationally at festivals such as Festival d’Automne (Paris), Rencontres Chorégraphiques (Paris), Festival d’Avignon, Impulstanz (Vienna), TanzimAugust (Berlin), Panorama Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Festival Transmeriques (Montreal), and Holland Festival, among others. He has also shown performance work in visual art contexts such as MoMA, MoMA PS1, Performa Biennial, Fondation Cartier (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), The Margulies Art Warehouse (Miami), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Serralves Museum (Porto), Centre Pompidou- Metz, Centre Pompidou-Paris, ICA Boston and Art Basel-Miami Beach. He has been a receipient of fellowships from The Saison Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Doris Duke Foundation. He is perhaps best known for a series of works entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church which re-imagine a meeting between early postmodern dance and the voguing dance tradition and created in seven sizes. Antigone Sr., the large in the series, won the 2012 Bessie
Award for Best Production. He is currently involved in a two-year Annenberg Research Commission Residency at The Museum of Modern Art- MoMA.
Trajal Harrell’s work has been presented In New York and the U.S. at many venues including Crossing the Line Festival, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts, TBA Festival- Portland, Walker Arts Center-Minneapolis, American Realness Festival, ICA Boston, Danspace Project, DTW, P.S. 122, Cornell University, Colorado College, Philadelphia Live Arts and Los Angeles’ RedCat Theater. His work has been presented internationally at festivals such as Festival d’Automne (Paris), Rencontres Chorégraphiques (Paris), Festival d’Avignon, Impulstanz (Vienna), TanzimAugust (Berlin), Panorama Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Festival Transmeriques (Montreal), and Holland Festival, among others. He has also shown performance work in visual art contexts such as MoMA, MoMA PS1, Performa Biennial, Fondation Cartier (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), The Margulies Art Warehouse (Miami), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Serralves Museum (Porto), Centre Pompidou- Metz, Centre Pompidou-Paris, ICA Boston and Art Basel-Miami Beach. He has been a receipient of fellowships from The Saison Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Doris Duke Foundation. He is perhaps best known for a series of works entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church which re-imagine a meeting between early postmodern dance and the voguing dance tradition and created in seven sizes. Antigone Sr., the large in the series, won the 2012 Bessie
Award for Best Production. He is currently involved in a two-year Annenberg Research Commission Residency at The Museum of Modern Art- MoMA.