Renversons’s inaugural season begins with Origins, an evening-length performance of innovative contemporary ballet choreographed by Artistic Director Minnie Lane and guest choreographer Adriana Pierce.
Performed at New York Live Arts by the company’s six dancers, the show comprises four original conceptual works that invite the audience into a collaborative, expansive, and unexpected experience of ballet. This performance, while rooted in classical technique, presents stories and experimentation that challenge the structures of traditional ballet.
The program opens with Recreation, a sneaker ballet set to upbeat folk music by The Trials of Cato that draws inspiration from social dances across history, evoking themes of joy, community, and liberation. In The Gallery, attention shifts to questioning a viewer’s relationship with art, amidst an operatic experimental soundtrack by Electric Fields. Guest choreographer Adriana Pierce’s new work builds on repetitive movement patterns that mirror the rhythms of self-soothing, alongside a collection of songs by New York–based violinist-bassist duo ‘big dog little dog.’ The evening concludes with an expanded version of Minnie’s acclaimed work Bury Your Gaze. Originally a four-minute piece lauded at Fall for Fall, Hartford Dance Festival, and Arts on Site, the piece has been developed into a 20-minute ballet myth that reframes the narratives of the Biblical creation myth and the Greek Muses through a distinctly lesbian lens, breaking away from their patriarchal traditions. Set to music by queer composer Jean-Michel Blais, the work reflects Minnie’s unique relationship to sound as a Hard of Hearing choreographer.
With imaginative costume designs by Lauren Carmen and attentive lighting design by Emily Clarkson, Origins commences Renversons’s presence as a ballet company working to interrogate, disrupt, and reinvent ballet’s place in our contemporary, diverse world.
