Tiffany Mills: Berries, bulls and BAC

Opening this week at Baryshnikov Arts Center 

and recommended

Top: Petra van Noort with Jeffrey Duval
Bottom: Emily Pope-Blackman with Kevin Ho
Photos: Julie Lemberger (c)2012

 

Tiffany Mills Company presents the world premiere of Berries and Bulls, a dance that relentlessly digs below the surface of long-term relationships. With her title--which sounds to me like a folk song in the making--the crafty Mills plays with duality of the masculine/feminine kind. The hour-long quartet features some serious rough-and-tumble and wit of the physical as well as verbal variety. Mills' terrific and durable dancers journey through a raw, precarious emotional landscape. If you follow them, you'll wind up feeling as if you've just been spun around in a blender, but how can you not follow Jeffrey Duval, Kevin Ho, and especially Emily Pope-Blackman and Petra van Noort?

It takes serious teamwork to pull off a work this rich and complex, and that team includes organizations and programs that gave Mills a string of residencies and space grants to develop her piece--Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dance New Amsterdam, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BAC and Joyce Theater/Mellon Anchor Tenant Program. Getting it done!

See Berries and Bulls, Thursday-Saturday, March 1-3, 7:30pm. Opening Night will be followed by a gala. For more information and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)