Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012)

Late Show just Added!  Friday May 11 at 10pm

Pre-Show Talk May 9 at 6:30pm with Juliette Mapp
Post-Show Talk May 11 with Carla Peterson

Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012), which premiered at Bryn Mawr College in February, is a personal look at the body (alternately medical, eroticized and/or aestheticized).  Described by the Philadelphia Inquirer as “philosophically poetic and exploratory,” the work invites audiences to examine contemporary notions of how we experience the body as both owners and spectators. With choreography and visual design by “Bessie” Award-winner John Jasperse, the original Fort Blossom premiered in 2000 at The Kitchen with Jasperse and performers Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz and Juliette Mapp. The revisited and expanded version features performers Ben Asriel, Lindsay Clark, Erika Hand and Burr Johnson. In returning to this work, Jasperse has questioned how his approach to the material has shifted over time, how original intentions could be manifest with increased potency, and how changes that have occurred within his own body affect his frame of reference, understanding, and desires for expression within the work. The central goal of reigniting a certain tough freshness of the original gesture of the work has guided the process, which Jasperse has described as an unabashed utopian desire for a community of difference in togetherness that exists in a space beyond shame.

While not composed for this work, the music for Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012) is drawn from pre-existing commercially released recordings by Ryoji Ikeda and is used with the gracious permission of the composer. Original Lighting Design is by Stan Pressner. Costume construction of the women’s dresses is by Deanna Berg.

Choreography and Visual Design by John Jasperse
Performed by Ben Asriel, Lindsay Clark, Erika Hand, and Burr Johnson
Lighting Design by Stan Pressner

Original Roles created by Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz, Juliette Mapp and John Jasperse

This presentation of Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012) is made possible, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and contributors to the Dance Theater Workshop Commissioning Fund at New York Live Arts.
 
Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012) is reconstructed with lead support from Bryn Mawr College, funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance; it is being developed in residencies at Baryshnikov Art Center and Bryn Mawr College.