Doug Elkins: Hapless Bizarre

One of the most imaginative and clever dance events in recent Williams Center memory was Doug Elkins’ 2008 fanciful Fräulein Maria. Now Elkins returns with the same wit, style, and gleeful sense of fun, as Lafayette audiences will be among the first to see his new work, Hapless Bizarre, juried by the National Dance Project for exemplary merit. Elkins has gathered a multi-talented cast with backgrounds in dance, theater, music, and circus to make a full-length work teetering along the brink of high and low art. Guided by the politics and histories of early performers like Chaplin, Tati, Keaton, and The Marx Brothers—all of whom pursued a populist aesthetic with serious intentions—the project will explore the fault lines that separate choreography and physical comedy to ask, “Where does slapstick end and dance begin?” Also on the program is his wildly engaging Mo(or)town/Redux, Elkins’ retelling in dance of Shakespeare’s Othello-Desdemona-Iago conflict (adapted from José Limon’s iconic Moor’s Pavane), with Marvin Gaye and the songs of Motown as his muse. Jacob’s Pillow dance scholar Suzanne Carboneau profiles this important choreographer perfectly: “Doug Elkins is the Hero with a Thousand Faces of modern dance. A Promethean figure, Elkins brings the heat of laughter and the fire of joy into the precincts of a sedate art form. That he stole this fire from the deities of dance (Limon, Graham, and Ailey among them) only adds to the fun.” Dramaturg Anne Davison will lead a free discussion at 7:00 p.m. in room 108.