Brian Brooks’ interpretive dance, Run Don’t Run, featured at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week (October 22-26). Brooks is known for his daring choreography and abstract set designs, and was recently awarded a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship. In Run Don’t Run, Brooks tests his dancers physical endurance through an hour of specific, dynamic, and kinetic sequences of movement.
The set of the show was designed by Brooks to specifically amplify the motions of his dancers, and the limitations and resilience of the human body. At BAM Fisher, the dance takes place between the two sides of inner-facing seating, where hundreds of bungee cords are stretched from one end of the theater to the other. Throughout the dance, the dancers use the cords in a multitude of ways. Whether it is by leaning on them towards the audience, dancing between them, being carried over them, or dancing underneath them, the dancers utilized the set throughout the entire performance.
As previously stated, Brian Brooks is a daring choreographer. His eight dancers do a marvelous job of dancing his trying, hour-long routine. Not once does the choreography appear easy: the dancers carry each other across the room; synchronically jump across the room; and harmoniously do intricate motions with their arms and bodies. The difficulty of Brooks’ choreography is apparent on the faces of the dancers in the form of sweat. Only once during the performance does a dancer falter from a deadpan expression. That takes a lot of internal power.
The meaning and story of the dance is rather difficult to decipher because of how abstract the choreography was. And, since there was no story outlined to the audience other than a symbolic one portrayed through the dance, that probably only those knowledgeable in the art of dance and choreography would be able to fully interpret, we – non-professional viewers – are left to presume the story that the dance projected. Personally, I feel the dance was the story of people being let out from an insane asylum – or escaping one – in reverse.
The choreography at the end of the performance made it seem as though the dancers were in a straight jacket and could not use their arms. Their movements were very restrained. The beats thundering in the ears of the audience aid this feeling of darkness. In the beginning and middle of the performance, the dancers have much more mobility and do a lot of motions with their hands – possibly signifying that they are finally free from the asylum. Also, the overall tone of the choreography is much more positive and happy in the first two thirds of the routine.
This theory of mine is most likely horribly wrong, but that is the beauty of interpretive dances: not knowing. It is this unknowing that coaxes viewers to use their imagination to make their own assumptions about what they are seeing, which draws their attention to the performance. Not knowing causes viewers to think and to be engaged. Brian Brooks and his dancers do a marvelous job of evoking thought and imagination from their viewers, and that is the art of interpretive dancing. If you like performances that make you think, you will definitely enjoy Run Don’t Run.
