Moving Brian Brooks dance piece Motor makes ‘spirit soar’

With the delicacy of a spider web and the rigorous logic of a chain reaction, three miles of sky blue cord stretch outward from the stage and into the seats, enveloping dancers and audience alike.

Choreographer Brian Brooks is known for creating works defined by cheeky wit, audacious visuals and superhuman endurance. In Motor, a major new piece for seven dancers, Brooks explores notions of time, entropy and perpetual movement, spinning intricate structures from simple movements that build and fragment like particles colliding.

Beginning Friday, Jan. 20, the Brian Brooks Moving Company will present the 40-minute Motor, along with two shorter works — I’m Going to Explode and Descent — as part of the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University.

Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 20 and 21. Tickets are $35, or $30 seniors, $25 for Washington University faculty and staff and $20 for students and children.

Tickets are available at the Edison Box Office and through all MetroTix outlets. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-6543, email edison@wustl.edu or visit edison.wustl.edu.

Motor

Set to a propulsive electronic score by Jonathan Pratt, Motor begins with two trios — three women and three men (including Brooks himself) — looping and swirling against the tunnel-like backdrop, its radiating schematic lines suggesting both astrophysics and virtual reality.

Dressed in dark blue slacks and shirts, the dancers sketch ornate patterns of collision and reformation at a variety of speeds — slowing down, speeding up, pausing for a cinematic still — before dissolving into new configurations. As these sequences proceed, movements (and clothing) begin to loosen, building to an extended, exhausting duet that pushes two male dancers to the limits of physical endurance.

Following intermission, Brooks will return to the stage for I’m Going to Explode, an energetic nine-minute solo set to Losing My Edge by LCD Soundsystem. Dressed in corporate gray, Brooks slowly begins moving his shoulders but quickly develops gestures of increasing strength and complexity, exploring both the tensions of confined spaces and the pleasures of breaking out of them.

Concluding the evening will be Descent (2011), a lyrical ensemble piece that begins with one male dancer carrying another across a darkened stage. Soon joined by other couples, the pair retakes center stage for a duet recalling the choppy synchronization of martial arts sparring. Next, the dancers use small boards to wave aloft thin fabric sheets before ascending themselves in a long series of jump variations.

The New Yorker praises Brian Brooks Moving Company for fusing “minimalist rigor with flamboyant whimsy,” while The New York Times notes that, “Brooks is intrigued by the way repetition grows to create a machine of bodies.”

“Brooks’ brilliant escalating repetitions call for endurance, not to say heroism, on the part of the performers,” adds the Village Voice. “Smart, utterly unpretentious heroes, they make your eyes water and your spirit soar.’ ”

Brian Brooks

Brooks lives and works in New York City. He started his first dance company at age 14 in his hometown of Hingham, Mass., with a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. At 17, he began his formal dance training under the direction of Jimmy Viera at the Jeannette Neill Dance Studio in Boston, and spent two years dancing in the companies of Diane Noya and Adrienne Hawkins.

Since moving to Brooklyn in 1994, Brooks has danced in the companies of Sean Curran, Eun-Me Ahn and Carolyn Dorfman, where he trained with Risa Steinberg. Most recently, he danced for three years with Elizabeth Streb and was a part of the original cast of the critically acclaimed works Edge, Squirm, Up and Down and Tied.

Since 2002, the Brian Brooks Moving Company has been presented throughout the United States, Asia and Europe, and by organizations including Jacob’s Pillow, SUMMERDANCE Santa Barbara, The Yard, Montreal’s Tangente and the Korean Center for the Arts in Seoul, South Korea.

In New York, his work has been presented by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Symphony Space, the Tisch School of the Arts, Dance Space Center, Central Park Summerstage, Galapagos, DanceNow/NYC and Dance Theater Workshop.

Brooks is a part time faculty member of the Dance Department at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he was also a Fall 2011 Guest Artist. He is teaching and creating new work at Princeton University.

Edison Theatre

Founded in 1973, the Edison Ovations Series serves both Washington University and the St. Louis community by providing the highest caliber national and international artists in music, dance and theater, performing new works as well as innovative interpretations of classical material not otherwise seen in St. Louis.

Edison programs are made possible with support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and private contributors. The Ovations season is supported by The Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.