IN PERFORMANCE: MOLLY LIEBER + ELEANOR SMITH – BASKETBALL (COIL 2017)

Molly Lieber + Eleanor Smith – Basketball (World Premiere)

Saturday, Jan 7, 7pm
Sunday, Jan 8, 4pm + 7pm
Monday, Jan 9, 4pm
Tuesday, Jan 10, 7pm

at Howard Gilman Performance Space,
Baryshnikov Arts Center,
450 West 37th Street, Manhattan

Basketball is a team sport. It requires discipline and sharp focus. These virtues are exemplified when the game is played one on one. Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith’s experimental dance piece developed over two years has the quality of an intense game of one on one. Lieber and Smith exhibit risk in subtle and eerie ways. It’s hard to know when one performer ends and the other begins. That requires an incredible amount of intimacy that is rarely seen on stage. You wonder if they are going to get through it. They are dancing for each other and we are invited to witness. Claire Fleury’s multiple costumes reveal as much the performers do. The costumes highlight gender in subtle and surprising ways.