This American Dance: Monica Bill Barnes & Company at Skirball

This is sort of a follow-up to Yeah. What Ira Said. So, read that first. Then hurry back....

Okay, welcome back!

So, as I left NYU's Skirball Center last night, Ira Glass had just retaken the stage after the concert and was asking the audience how many of them had been dance fans before tonight, how many dance shows they had attended in the last year, and the like. I'd wondered about that, too, since it looked more like an NPR audience--his NPR audience--and it probably was.

In any case, it's well known that Glass and his audience now love Monica Bill Barnes & Company since Glass welcomed Barnes and troupe into a This American Life event shown in "more than 600 movie theatres across the US, Canada and Australia." Barnes & Co. did so well with that audience, that what was originally planned as a one-shot appearance--and a kind of victory lap-- at Skirball has been extended: If you can still get a ticket (try here), you can see MBB & Co. with Ira Glass today at 3pm.

If you do get to go, I hope you like glitter, because you'll see lots of it glinting from Kelly Hanson's costumes and gusts of it flying through the air. So much that Glass--unexpectedly, because he'd missed a crucial email--had to get on stage and vamp for four minutes--with a nifty balloon trick and one awkward story--while stage hands cleaned up half the stage.

I happen to love glitter and soul music and perfectly calibrated physical comedy. So, when it comes to Barnes, all good. Give up your leisurely Sunday if you agree.

Anna Bass and Monica Bill Barnes dance Luster (photo by Christopher Duggan)

There's something about Anna Bass, Barnes's partner in crime, that reminds me of Carol Burnett; both have genius. Barnes, I can't quite describe. She is a performer unto herself. Barnes and Bass often dance side by side, at great length, in related though not identical movement. I just realized last night that I must choose. I can just go ahhhh and settle into enjoying the talented Bass or I can stay on high alert for all the rapidfire, formidable changes Barnes goes through and try to figure her out. I can switch, but I can't watch both.

The nearly two-hour program includes two lively Barnes/Bass duets--Luster (a New York City premiere) and I Feel Like--you know, the one with the James Brown sex machine song? It also features Mostly Fanfare (a 2010 trio with Christina Robson and chairs gorgeously held aloft in the dancers' jaws) and Everything Is Getting Better All The Time (a 2011 quartet including Robson and an adorable Giulia Carotenuto). Because, for Barnes, the glamor of the stage and its performers is clearly something to be celebrated even while she's poking affectionate fun at it all, lighting designer Jane Cox makes a fantastic team player. 

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place, Manhattan
(between Washington Square South and West 3rd Street)
(map/directions)

Yeah. What Ira said.

Monica Bill Barnes & Company in Thank You and Good Night (photo by Steven Schreiber)

The utterly charming Monica Bill Barnes & Company will be at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts with This American Life host Ira Glass tomorrow and Sunday (but this is not an announcement--because you already know that, right? And, if not, you can find out more here.)

I'm bringing this up because Glass said something about his experience of seeing Barnes' troupe for the first time that I'd like to share. I'll explain why later. Here's his quote:

NPR's Ira Glass

I was inspired to make our recent cinema event after seeing MBB & CO. in June 2011. I'll be honest, I don't go to a lot of dance, but her show was the most charmingly alive dance performance I've ever seen. Literally, while it was going on, all I could think was, ‘I want to see this again. How do I see this again? How do I bring everyone I've ever met to this?’ So I created that cinema event in May 2012 where we performed an episode of our show onstage at Skirball and beamed it into movie theaters, with dances by MBB & CO. Afterwards, the most common question I was asked was 'Who were those dancers?' People kept coming up to me saying 'I don't like dance. I don't go to dance. I want to see them again.' Which, yes, is a weird thing to say about an entire art form, but the point is, they won a lot of fans that night and I think when people see a full MBB & CO. show, they'll be even more wowed.

As it turns out, I feel this way about a lot of the dance and movement-based performance I see--I want to "bring everyone I've ever met to this." I want a lot of what I see to not fade away so fast--like after a night or a few nights or, if the artists are lucky, a couple of weekends. I want it to be seen by more than the usual suspects. And I want it to be pondered and processed and taken to heart and argued about and remembered. I want it to influence things beyond dance, beyond the arts. I want it on the American breakfast table and at the water cooler and on the supermarket queue and in the neighborhood bar and in the board room and in the war room.

Good going to Barnes for getting Glass's attention and his joyful response. Her efforts are good for her, of course, and possibly good for us all. What do you think, maybe in 2013 and going forward more of us can step up our magic(k) creativity and raise the outside world's awareness about what's doing in these excellent, essential little villages we call the dance communit(ies)? Let's work on ways to bring everyone we meet to this.

This *dancing* American Life!

Guess who's coming to This American Life on Thursday, May 10? Monica Bill Barnes & Company!

Yeah, that's right: A dance troupe. No, not on the radio. It's a live show from New York's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, screened in select movie theaters, and here are all the details.

I saw this amazing dance performance by Monica Bill Barnes' company, and I thought - that is totally in the style of our radio show. But obviously you can't have dance on the radio. Then I realized, we have to do another cinema event! We've built this lineup of stories mixed with super visual things, including the dancers I saw, so it's going to feel like the radio show but also totally unlike anything we've done before. I really can't wait to see how it turns out.”

-- Ira Glass, Executive Producer and host, This American Life

"Dark Shadows" rules!