“…magical…unexpectedly filled with allusive mystery.”
-The New York Times, 2008
Necessary Beauty
To paraphrase Einstein, “the most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious.” NECESSARY BEAUTY conjures the rhythm of action and memory – and that fleeting clarity a second look can provide. Comprised of intimate, multimedia segments for six dancers, NECESSARY BEAUTY continues a line of investigation into the convergence of dance, theater and digital technology that resulted in the Bessie award-winning work Landing/Place, and features the same creative team: choreographer/director Bebe Miller, video artist Maya Ciarrocchi, animator Vita Berezina-Blackburn, dramaturg Talvin Wilks, lighting designer Michael Mazzola and composer Albert Mathias. Joining the team with provocative new text is writer Ain Gordon. Performers include Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Kristina Isabelle, Cynthia Oliver and Yen-Fang Yu, along with Bebe Miller.
Choreographer Bebe Miller is a master of ‘story-ness,’ an exploration of intention and focus that feel like history and future at play. Our key words for the collaborative process – unseen influence and fleeting clarity – have found a metaphor in Dark Matter’s invisible effect on the galaxies it encounters, as well as the passing epiphanies of overheard conversations and simple domestic intimacies. So: story-ness and physics, intention and focus, gravity and light reveal themselves in Dark Matter that dances.
To view a video excerpt of this work, visit our Media page.
Choreography and Direction: Bebe Miller
Dramaturgy: Talvin Wilks
Music: Albert Mathias; Henry Purcell
Animation Design: Vita Berezina-Blackburn
Video Design: Maya Ciarrocchi
Lighting Design: Michael Mazzola
Text: Ain Gordon, in collaboration with the performers
Costume Construction: Mary Yaw McMullen
Premiere: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2008
“Their beauty is soul-deep. It resides in dancers’ bones, muscles, and sinews—sometimes blurry, sometimes startlingly clear.”
Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, 2008