We had the pleasure of attending a performance, “In Formations” by Douglas Dunn & Dancers, this past summer at a week of free lunchtime performances on the Elevated Acre in Lower Manhattan, a hidden park up an escalator and nestled behind a non-descript building, resting above FDR drive. It was one of those transcendent moments experienced by tens of thousands of other New Yorkers we’re sure, when you are walking around the city on a bright summer day, looking for a corner of the city you never knew existed overlooking the East River for a free choreographed dance performance by a renowned dance company.
Douglas Dunn & Dancers, called a “downtown dance darling” by WNYC, formed in 1978 and was invited that year to perform at the Autumn Festival in Paris. Two years later, the Autumn Festival and The Paris Opera Ballet invited Dunn back to choreograph Stravinsky’s full length Pulcinella. Since then, Dunn, one of America’s most respected choreographers, has continued to create ”works that consistently expand our definitions of modern dance, imbuing formalistic rigor with psychological content, incisive wit and sly humor,” receiving fellowships along the way from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as a number of others.
His “About” section lists a number of simple declarative statements about why they dance, and neatly sums up what we find so attractive about this company. “I dance to obliterate duration. I dance to dignify form as content. I dance to equalize figure & surround. I dance to put intuition in conversation with thought. I dance to demonstrate the great facility & ridiculous limits of the un-accoutered human body. I dance not to be stuck in one position. I dance in order to stand up straight. I dance because you don’t have to carry your instrument. I dance because I can’t wait to be asked. I dance to achieve a vital, non-heroic presence. I dance to shrink to an irreducible kernel of purified being. I dance to arouse things out there that have not yet done so to enter my mind. I dance to have a say in what I submit to. I dance to forget why I dance.”
As part of the annual 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, celebrating it’s fifteenth anniversary this year, Douglas Dunn & Dancers reprise Pulcinella. This special program combines this Dunn classic with a new work from the company then boss in man? featuring dancers Kira Blazek, Liz Filbrun, Jean Freebury, Paul Singh, and Christopher Williams and classical guitarist Tali Roth.
