Meta/Pina Project: Blind Dreamers

“As a young ensemble actor in the late 1970s, I would travel long distances to see Pina’s company perform whenever they toured to BAM. There was something deeply profound and truthful in the theatrical movement relationships (tanztheater) that Pina created which reso-nated with me. I was driven by the desire to create ensemble theatre that took as a starting point the condition of our bodies in revelation of human experience.” (S. Stoodley)

With the “Blind Dreamers: Meta/Pina Project”, Serious Play! pays homage to Pina Bausch, visionary German choreographer and creator of Tanztheater Wuppertal. Utilizing Bausch’s unique rehearsal processes and borrowing and responding to her gestural language, co-directors Sheryl Stoodley and Toby Bercovici have worked with ten performers to create a dreamlike family portrait.

Bausch, who died at age 68 in 2009, used a variety of “actor-tasks” in creating her company’s work in order to uncover basic human motivations. Through physical action, relationships are revealed and developed. And physical actions, perhaps repeated or changing in tempo, communicate a variety of meanings. The way a gesture is performed begins to define a relationship and connects to larger themes of tenderness, trust, attraction, insecurity, betrayal, loss, despair and violence.

In Blind Dreamers, the family members strive for connection while struggling to meet familial and societal expectations. Through actor-tasks assigned by the directors, structured improvisational compositions, and the development of gesture, a physical language specific to this piece emerged within the ensemble. As with Pina’s work, Blind Dreamers is built on elements of ensemble members’ own experiences, translated into gestures of connection, personal struggle, and striking interaction.

The performers who make up the ensemble, and who have collaborated with Stoodley and Bercovici in the creation of Blind Dreamers, are Grace Booth, Carissa Dagenais, Jay Dolan, Rachel Garbus, Dunan Herman-Parks, Daniel Kinsey, Constance Leslie, Carolyn Sadeh, Kaliis Smith, Ren Steger. The music is composed and played by John Sheldon, lighting design by Reilly Horan & Kathy Couch, special dance choreography by Lisa Enzer, and swing dance choreography by Emily Fox.