Big Dance Theater at the Kitchen: Comme Toujours Here I Stand

Comme Toujours Here I Stand

The Kitchen: 512 West 19th Street, New York City
October 1-4 and 7-10; All shows at 8pm
For tickets: thekitchen.org
If you need further information, please contact: bigdancetheater@earthlink.net

"Big Dance Theater's new work, entitled COMME TOUJOURS HERE I STAND, re-invents Agnes Varda's classic New Wave film, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 for the stage. Shot in Paris in 1961, the film tracks the early evening hours in the life of a marginally talented pop singer, as she waits to hear if she has terminal cancer. The Company uses the script as a found object to create an intimate portrait of a woman shadowed by death, while still caught up in the breezy pleasures of the day: shopping, visiting, strolling. The piece serves also as a critique of the flexible and facile nature of the medium of film, when set against the hand made qualities of live dance and theater.

BDT teams up with video artist Jeff Larson to make Cleo's activities come alive via the intersection of three rolling walls and decidedly low-budget video, fracturing space to capture the agile quality of film. In a unique collaboration between costumes, set and video, the clothes, and wallpaper merge on video into one expressive medium to describe the vivid, colorful interiors of a filmic world. BDT's innovative use of dance as staging will collide the fear of death, the minutiae of everyday life, and the beauty of a city."

The work is directed by and choreographed by Annie-B Parson with co-direction by Paul Lazar , and with the original title song by Robyn Hitchcock. Commissioned by the French Institute/Alliance Francaise in New York, with residency support by Les Subsistances in Lyon France. It premiered at Les Subsistances' Ca Tchatche Festival April 23-26 2009 and will have its NYC premiere at The Kitchen Oct. 1 --Oct 10.