Giant Empty, 2001, at the American Dance Festival, photos by Ross Taylor [Enlarge in New Window]

John Jasperse: Giant Empty

John Jasperse's Giant Empty is anything but. While resolutely abstract, like all of Jasperse's dance pieces, this latest work is filled with bodies and objects that take on multiple meanings at the blink of an eye. A stairway leading nowhere becomes a grandstand on which dancers sit and regard the audience; a series of vertically hanging ropes intimate the outline of a cage, then whirl among the performers in a series of fluid, kinetic shapes. As Giant Empty opens, a dancer places a series of small blocks upright in a diagonal row. Over the course of the piece, the blocks are danced around and through, rolled over, thrown, and rearranged with subtle precision - they are essential elements in a complex work that by turns intimates earnest childhood play, intimate power struggles, and the possibility of urban catastrophe.

Elegant and reckless, elusive and articulate, humorous and austere, Jasperse's choreographic world is one where opposing tendencies are brought together in an uneasy unity. The Bessie Award-winning choreographer premiered Giant Empty at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 2001 and, following 10 years of steadily mounting acclaim, the piece definitively established Jasperse as a true American original in contemporary dance.

The choreography itself fuses fluid, idiosyncratic gestures, virtuosic partnering, and complex, explosive unison movement, executed with breathtaking clarity by longtime Jasperse Company members Miguel Guttierez, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp, as well as Jasperse himself. The shifting tension of the dance is heightened by Stan Pressner's angular lighting design and Michael Floyd's spare sound collage. As a whole, the piece leaves the impression of a contemporary urban ritual that will go on long after the lights have dimmed.

Inspired by visual artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Ann Hamilton, Jasperse has a penchant for exposing the seams in his work. "I'm not into the 'magical emergence from the fog' " he says, explaining the deliberate way a pair of his dancers may walk onstage and set themselves into position for the start of a new section. At the same time, the choreographer makes sure the dancing flows seamlessly from moment to moment. "I start with self-contained sections," he explains, "then try to find the demarcation points between sections and dissolve them."

In addition to his ongoing activities with his New York City company, Jasperse is increasingly in demand for choreographic commissions both in the U.S. and overseas. Giant Empty's Next Wave Festival premiere was a co-production with William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt, and the choreographer was recently hired to create new work for France's Lyon Opera Ballet, John Scott's Irish Modern Dance Theater in Dublin, and for students at the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina.

But increased recognition hasn't meant Jasperse has begun to rest on his laurels. Instead, he has used broader exposure and larger venues to take on ever greater challenges. "The work is becoming more experimental as I get more comfortable taking risks," he explains. With each new piece, Jasperse pushes himself to address issues that are more fundamental and complex. "I keep thinking maybe it'll get easier," he laughs, "But it doesn't. Each piece asks more systemic questions: what is it I want to accomplish by making and sharing work?"

One of the most stunning aspects of Jasperse's vision is the way in which viewers are asked to make their own connections and associations with what is happening onstage. In creating choreography of profound formal and intellectual rigor without imposing a didactic message, Jasperse is that rare artist who demands we think for ourselves. As Giant Empty continues to tour the U.S. and Europe and as Jasperse further hones his craft, it's clear this choreographer is going to help illuminate contemporary dance for years to come.

[ About this article ]

THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Performance > Dance | The Built Environment | New York | 2000