(M)IMOSA, Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M), a choreographic collaboration between Cecilia Bengolea, Francois Chaignaud, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, and Trajal Harrell, is the title given to the Medium version of Harrell’s series in five sizes, (XS) – (XL), entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. The propositional departure for the series – “What would have happened in 1963, if someone from the voguing ball scene had come down to Judson Church in Greenwich Village to perform alongside the early postmoderns?” – is not addressed but reconfigured by (M)IMOSA into a encounter between these four artistic voices.
The Voguing dance tradition refers to the competitive balls staged in Harlem dance halls beginning in the 1960′s. A form of social performance practiced primarily by African-American and Latino gays, transvestites, and transsexuals, voguing imitates archetypal social and gender identities through fashion, movement, and behavior. At the same historical moment, in the 1960’s, the pioneers of the postmodern dance broke with the traditional representations of classical and modern dance and sought to make dance without artifice, based in authenticity.
Inspired by Paris is Burning, the seminal documentary film about voguing; their personal research on voguing; and their collective experience as makers, the four collaborators in (M)IMOSA dare to own and share the immediate distance between themselves, between them and their inspiration, between what they portend and what they perform, and between their counteracts.
CREATION TEAM
Conception and performance Cecilia Bengolea, François Chaignaud, Trajal Harrell, Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Lighting design Yannick Fouassier
Styling La Bourette
Lighting techncian Yannick Fouassier / Sylvain Rausa
Sound technician Martin Trinquart / Pete Dowling
Administration/production Matthieu Banvillet
Tour planning Sarah de Ganck/ART HAPPENS
COPRODUCTION
Le Quartz scène nationale de Brest, Chaillot — Théâtre national de la Danse, Paris, CDC de Toulouse/Midi-Pyrénées, The Kitchen — New York, Bomba Suicida — Lisbonne, FUSED French US Exchange in Dance.
SUPPORTS
La Ménagerie de verre – Paris, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Drac Poitou-Charentes, Institut français, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Matthieu Banvillet, Sarah Michelson, DD Dorvillier, Ben Pryor, Lasseindra Ninja, Alex Mugler, Rumi Missabu, Pascal Queneau, Archie Burnett, Javier Madrid, Matthieu Bajolet, Donatien Veismann, Miguel Bengolea, Marianne Chargois, Joao Figueira, Rio Rutzinger, Emmanuelle Huynh and Jessica Trossman
