The 2014 Season Begins at Basilica Hudson

Creative director Melissa Auf der Maur describes the inaugural event of the 2014 season at Basilica Hudson as "our most ambitious visual art and performance production yet."

A collaboration between choreographer Jonah Bokaer and artist Anthony McCall, Eclipse is a site specific blend of choreography, art installation, and experimental cinema for dancers and light, "exploring the perception of space at its most elemental." Much of Bokaer's inspiration for Eclipse came from watching the lunar eclipse last summer from the Hudson Valley. "It was amazing to think of the huge distances involved between viewer, sun and moon, but also of how everything seemed to be happening in the same two-dimensional plane."          

McCall, a British artist known for his large-scale and wildly imaginative outdoor multimedia installations, has created for Eclipse an in-the-round stage with thirty-six hanging light bulbs timed to glow subtly and change in time with key points of the dance movement. The audience will be seated on all four sides of the stage, so that each member of the audience will have a different sight and sound experience, as the four dancers "traverse a field of light, flickering to form points, lines, and planes." Natural light (and darkness) also plays a role: the sixty-minute performance is timed to end at sundown.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 25, and Saturday, April 26. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.