Trajal Harrell: Judson Church is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) / Twenty Look or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (M2M)

In the organizer's words:

In the 1960s, New York was the birthplace of two influential dance movements. In the Judson Memorial Church in downtown Manhattan, the Judson Dance Theater collective with members such as Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs marked the beginning of postmodern dance with experimental approaches and minimalist performances. A few miles uptown in Harlem, Black and Latin American queer people organized the first Balls - competitions inspired by masked balls and Hollywood stars, in which the privileged white population was imitated in subversive performance and realness categories and competed for trophies in pompous costumes and, since the 1980s, with a movement repertoire inspired by the fashion world(voguing). Despite the geographical and temporal immediacy, both movements and their protagonists largely co-existed without history documenting a clash or artistic exchange. Choreographer Trajal Harrell's series Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church explores the cracks and ruptures in this history.

Half a century later, in one piece in the series alo, Harrell asks what would have happened if one of the early postmodernists from Judson Church had gone uptown to perform in the Harlem voguing scene. In Judson Church Is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) / Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at The Judson Church (M2M), the American choreographer and two other dancers imagine this fictitious event in an act of playful and pleasurable confrontation. The minimalism and neutrality of postmodern dance meets the opulence and expressiveness of voguing, creating completely new possibilities never before seen in historical reality. And he finds a common denominator between the two contrasting styles: walking. Between everyday and runway movements, three dancers create exciting new narratives about social discourses and aesthetic influences.

Trajal Harrell is an extremely popular old acquaintance in Munich. He was already a guest at the DANCE Festival in 2015 with Antigone Sr. Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (L) and in 2017 with Caen Amour. Under the directorship of Matthias Lilienthal, he developed the choreographies Juliet & Romeo and Morning in Byzantium with long-standing dance colleagues and ensemble members. With Made-to-Measure, a special production of the project series Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church, DANCE returns this year to the artistic roots of the US choreographer and presents a work that exemplifies what has made Harrell so famous internationally - the highly sensual and unique combination of voguing and early postmodern dance.

Price information:

Discounts are available for students, school pupils, trainees, the unemployed, senior citizens (65+) and people with disabilities.