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Merce Cunningham Dance Company Presents Gavin Bryars’ BIPED at BAM

Nov. 29, 2011

Merce Cunningham Dance Company Presents Gavin Bryars’ BIPED at BAM

Gavin Bryars’ BIPED, written for the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company, will receive its final performance with the company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music before the group’s disbandment at the end of this year. The Merce Cunningham Legacy Tour visits BAM in a four day celebration of Cunningham’s potent and influential career, December 7-10.

BIPED, scored for violin, cello, electric guitar, double bass, electric keyboard, and pre-recorded tape, was composed in 1999, one of the first commissions after the passing of Cunningham’s partner and collaborator, John Cage, in 1992. For this occasion, Bryars worked as Cage had, agreeing with Cunningham that the relationship between music and dance should be incidental. With each element composed in isolation from the other, each artist would work independently towards a common goal. The concept for the décor, however, was available to Bryars and became something from which he took inspiration. Designed by Shelly Eshkar and Paul Kaiser, the décor consists of video motion capture to project the movements of the dancers. Bryars adds:

In BIPED there is live dance and its digital shadow through the projected video animation (curiously, like the very first piece I saw, projected on to a front gauze) so I chose to have a form of digital replication within the music. The live instruments (electric guitar, cello, electric keyboard, acoustic double, violin and percussion) are reinforced by their electronic equivalents.

BIPED was premiered by the Gavin Bryars Ensemble and Merce Cunningham Dance Company on April 23, 1999 at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California. It is comprised of six sections that are performed without pause. BIPED will be performed on December 8 at BAM alongside Second Hand (1970), featuring John Cage's Cheap Imitation with costumes designed by Jasper Johns.

Learn more on Gavin Bryars at www.schott-music.com and www.gavinbryars.com

Precise ticketing and program information can be found at www.bam.org.

Gavin Bryars
BIPED (1999)
for ensemble and pre-recorded tape
egtr.ekeybd-str(1.0.0.1.1
45’

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