1990′s NYU

Cats & Dogs (1991)

An interpretation of the film,”Last Tango in Paris”, Will Crowell and I delved under the skin of the two main characters in the film, extracting the primal from the dysfunctional and turning it into movement. Edgy, wild, sensual, this piece has stayed true to my aesthetic over many years.
Music by Jeremy Toback and Phillip Greenlief

La Vie en Rose (1990)

Was originally choreographed to Twin Peaks composer Julee Cruise “Falling into the night”.  Her music was slow, sensual, almost lumbering.  I was working with our bodies as the instruments of this music. We were cellos, violas, guitars.  I changed the music at the last minute to Edith Piaf because her epic voice and the brightly colored tutus gave the dancers a classic french air and a new story line that seemed strongly in opposition to the abstraction set up by the first pieces of music. Danced by Laura Murphy, Pamela Geber, Jordana Toback

Happy Hour (1990)

A dance about four ladies getting drunk at a bar circa 1975, set to Eric Satie’s Sonatine Bureaucratique Allegro, Andante, Vivace. I attempted to follow Satie’s lighthearted arc with a modern tale of four women who get too drunk one night and end up getting sick and passing out on the floor. Set against the romantic backdrop of his intimate music piano sonatina, the messiness of a good idea gone bad fits the music, because it was the composition with which Satie concluded his series of “funny” 3-part solo piano compositions that had started in 1911.
Danced by Jeanine Durning, Kristin Kusanovich/Thea Kaufman alt., Laura Murphy, and Vanessa Walters

Unarmed (1990)

NYU tried to kick me out because I continually choreographed modern dance to music by rock bands.  I had set pieces to The Throwing Muses, The Smiths, Jimmy Hendrix you name it. Here I focused my dance/music rebellion on Public Enemy.  ”Unarmed” is about our numbness towards urban death and decay.