Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist

“Memory, often strikes me as a kind of dumbness. It makes one’s head heavy and giddy, as if one were not looking back down the receding perspectives of time but rather down on the earth from a great height, from one of those towers whose tops are lost to view in the clouds.” –W.G.Sebald

In Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist, we meet Lance, whose battles with his own personal demons-drugs and excess- exposes us to another type of war. It was the battlefield of the nightlife and underworld of the late 80s and early 90s club culture and sex trade. This “pretty boy-gangster thug”, a name he acquired in prison, holds steadfast to his often tragic and sometimes outrageously humorous narrative, while facing an uncertain future. 

This piece is part of Analogy: A Trilogy developed by Bill T. Jones with Associate Artistic Director, Janet Wong. Insipired by W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants, Jones continues his exploration of how text, storytelling and movement pull and push against each other and how another experience can be had through the combination and recombination of these elements. All three stories, while wildly different ruminate on the nature of service, duty and the question of what is a life well lived.

Composer Nick Hallett is creating original music informed by the text as well as a soundscape that combines German Romantic Lieder, songs from both world wars, the 50s and 60s classic pop music and the club music from the 80s and 90s. Hallett, pianist Emily Manzo and the ensemble will perform the music live.

– Décor by Creative Director, Bjorn Amelan with Video Design by Janet Wong.- Lighting design by long-time collaborator Robert Wierzel 

– Costumes by Liz Prince

Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist will premiere at the American Dance Festival in June 2016.