Fragments / Bokaer

Choreography and Direction - Jonah Bokaer

Musical Score - Soundwalk Collective, at MUDAM Luexembourg

Artistic Associate - Maximillian Cappelli-King

Lighting and Scenic Concept - Jonah Bokaer

Technical Supervision - Christina Watanabe

Costumes - Eugene Tachinni

Production and Lighting Supervision - Cliff Wallgren

Performance Research - Sara Procopio

Performers - Bradley Beakes, Alexandra Jane Bradshaw, Yebel Gallegos, Mary Lyn Graves, Bashaun Williams, and Melissa Younker

Premeire Date - September 25, 2014

28 minutes

Program Note - "Fragments" is a project made specifically for the Ririe Woodbury Dance Company, and for their dancers. When the commission started, I was re-reading my collaborator Anne Carson's translated fragments of Sappho, entitled "If Not, Winter." The text is an ingenious literary window into the lyric power of a Greek poet whose fragmentary text transcends the millennia: Carson translated the text by leaving the blank spaces (the gaps) in the papyrus as an integral part of the poems, and their spatialization. In Carson's translation, the poems also include the blank spaces on the page - which have disintegrated through the years.

In the production with Ririe Woodbury dancers, I've designed a stage space which is blasted open, gently, with two installation elements. The first is a set of hanging panels, whose depths and orientation break open the plane of the proscenium. A simple mirrored surface of the panels will allow the public to see gaps in the stage - or, reflections of themselves. The second is a set of fluorescent lights, producing a pattern on the floor. My idea is to highlight the dancers, and the space, with fragmentary reflections & refractions of light, and space.