Press

"Brooks's brilliant escalating repetitions call for endurance, not to say heroism, on the part of the performers… Smart, utterly unpretentious heroes, they make your eyes water and your spirit soar.'"
Deborah Jowitt,The Village Voice
>full article (PDF)

"Brian Brooks's 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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The Brian Brooks Moving Company has been presented throughout the US, Asia and Europe since 2002. In its hometown of New York City, the group has been presented by organizations including Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Central Park Summerstage and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Festival. National tours have included presentations by the American Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Vanderbilt University, Davidson College, the Egg and Wesleyan University. Additional support has come in the form of creative residencies awarded by 3-Legged Race in Minneapolis, SUMMERDANCE Santa Barbara, the University of Maryland, Colorado’s Green Box Festival and the Mt. Tremper Arts Festival. Dance Theater Workshop has commissioned and presented two premieres: 2004’s ACRE and 2006’s again again. Alfred University has presented the company on three occasions, as well as providing a residency that led to the creation of Brooks’s first self-made video dance, RAPID STILL, which has been licensed to Lincoln Center Institute for study by international educators.

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Biography

Brian Brooks (Choreographer), originally from Hingham, MA, moved to New York City in 1994. He has since danced with choreographers including Eun-Me Ahn, Christopher Williams and for three years with Elizabeth Streb. Brooks was a co-founder and managing director of WAX (the Williamsburg Art neXus), an arts facility in Brooklyn, from 1999-2004. He has been a Teaching Artist of Dance at the Lincoln Center Institute since 1999 and is currently the Chapter Leader of the TA Union represented by the United Federation of Teachers. He has been an artistic mentor for several dancers and choreographers through programs at Dance Theater Workshop and Lincoln Center Institute.

At age 14, Brooks founded his first dance group, funded, in part, with grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Since 2002, his work has been presented throughout New York, the US, South Korea and in Germany. Brooks has led Master Classes, workshops and residencies throughout the US and in Europe, at institutions including Illinois State University, Wesleyan University, the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, the Trevor Day School, Poland’s International Dance Festival in Bytom and at Elizabeth Streb’s studio SLAM (the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics). He was an Adjunct Associate Professor of Dance at Barnard College of Columbia University in 2009 and is currently on faculty at Rutgers University and Dance New Amsterdam.

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Repertory

BIG CITY (Work-in-Progress)

Affected by the physical and emotional destruction that takes over nations, communities and individuals, BIG CITY looks at the inevitable rebuilding that follows – of people putting things back together. The 40-minute piece for 7 dancers will feature an architectural set design that is built by the performers as the dance unfolds – boldly spilling off the stage and throughout the theater to playfully shift the audience’s experience. Taking inspiration from the effort and purposefulness of manual labor, Brooks uses intricate phrasing and musicality to bring beauty and grace to functional movement. BIG CITY will premiere on March 30 & 31 of 2012 at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, CA.

MOTOR

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 40-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.

DESCENT

Descrtiption coming soon...

I'm Going to Explode

Brian Brooks explores the body’s use of force within articulated spaces, both in relation to one’s surroundings and within the relative space defined by one’s own body. He juxtaposes the tension of working within confined spaces against the relief of breaking out of them, carefully navigating the balance and transition between the two. Informed by formal dance techniques, physical sports, parkour, street dance, and physics, Brooks’s movement is somewhat of a hybrid, splicing together an array of influences intended to be both fluid and contradictory.

The piece’s 9-minutes of precision and thrashing are emphasized by the music’s pounding beat and recurring spoken lyric, “I’m losing my edge.” Brooks questions the confines of the gray suit he wears, and perhaps the pressures that accompany it.

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