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Roster > Dance > Brian
Brooks Moving Company |
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Press
“For 16 minutes, dancers’ hands carve through,
knock at and sculpt the air. In an era of short attention spans,
Brooks reminds us we can cultivate awareness if we take the time
to really look.”
Kirsten Bodensteiner, The Washington Post
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article (PDF)
“Brian Brooks’ choreography is a kind of external exploration of human limits.”
Susan Yung, Dance Magazine
>full
article (PDF)
“Brian Brooks Moving Company’s performance of again again conjures an otherworldly place through both clever movement choices and mysterious visuals.”
Nancy Wozny, Dance Source Houston
>full
article (PDF)
“If a movement is worth doing, it’s worth doing again.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
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| Description
The Brian Brooks Moving Company, based in New York City and featuring
the choreography of Brian Brooks, had its first performance in 1997
when Brooks self-produced his dances at the Merce Cunningham Studio.
The production featured a short film of Brooks dancing at eleven
different public locations within eight hours, being stopped only
once by the police at the South Street Seaport. This event caught
the attention of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, who funded
a second “Performance Marathon” the following year,
sending Brooks and his group dancing across the Brooklyn Bridge,
around Grand Central Station, and through the aisles of a deli on
7th Avenue.
The company has since been presented in over 20 cities throughout
the US and in Canada and Seoul, South Korea. Dance Theater Workshop
has commissioned and presented two works; ACRE (2004) and again again
(2006). Recent funding includes two consecutive grants for the creation
of new work from the Greenwall Foundation (2005/2006) and a New York
Foundation for the Arts BUILD grant (2005/2006). Major support has
come in the form of creative residencies awarded by 3 Legged Race
in Minneapolis (2002, 2003), the University of Maryland (2004), SUMMERDANCE
Santa Barbara (2004, 2005), and DTW (2006). The company has been presented
by organizations including the American Dance Festival, Central Park
Summerstage, Jacob’s Pillow, Symphony Space, and The Egg.
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Biography
Brooks has led Master Classes throughout the country and created
new works as the invited Guest Artist at the University of Maryland,
Illinois State University, SUMMERDANCE Santa Barbara, and the St.
Stephen’s School in Austin, TX, among others. He is currently
leading a 12-week choreographic workshop for High School students
at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex, a Cultural After-School
Adventures (CASA) program administered by New York City’s
Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) in partnership
with DTW. He has been a Teaching Artist of Dance at the Lincoln
Center Institute for the Arts in Education since 1999, where he
has led Aesthetic Education workshops to students from Kindergarten
through College, as well as professional development workshops for
teachers, educators, principals, and college professors. Brooks
was a Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Williamsburg Art neXus
(WAX), a 3,500 square- foot arts facility in Brooklyn that housed
the company’s rehearsal studio and black-box theater, from
1999-2004. He has been an invited speaker/panelist for DTW, ADF,
the Joyce Theater, Joyce SoHo, the Field, and the New York Foundation
for the Arts.
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Repertory
MOTOR (evening length)
Spanning the distance from the back of the stage out to the farthest
walls of the theater, hundreds of sky blue cables expand to create
a tunnel-like space over both audience and performers in the 60-minute
dance MOTOR. Within this vibrant, large-scale installation, dancers
wrestle with themselves and one another in sequences that amplify
our linear perception of time and experience. Structuring informal
movement in a formal way, choreographer Brian Brooks builds each
moment off the previous one, creating a chain reaction that continues
until the show’s end.
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