Scientific American:
Performing Arts: Dance
Choreographer Brian Brooks at DTW/Commentary
April 19, 2004
by Tony Phillips

“We’ll keep changing it until 6:54 opening night,” choreographer Brian Brooks laughs, spragging striped adidas sandals across the black marley of his rehearsal space deep in the wilds of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. About the only thing that’s remained the same in this neighborhood since he took over the lease from some friends who were living there is the communal penchant for aluminum siding. “Williamsburg is over,” Brooks deadpans, “We’re all leaving.”

The studio sits in a graffitied, brick building nestled between a barbed wire compound camouflaged with what appear to be artificial Christmas tree limbs--“Don’t ask,” cautions Brooks—and the Bedford Street L stop. The studio is part of the not-for-profit space WAX he co-founded five years ago. Arts entrepreneur was an easy fit for the 29-year-old Brooks, who’s been running his own company professionally since he was 14-years-old.
His spragging adidas sandals are just one phrase his dancers know well, though they’d probably call it pacing. There’ll be lots more of it before the Brian Brooks Moving Company world premieres their latest dance called Acre.

Weena Pauly--part of the four member troupe along with Brooks, Nicholas Duran and Jo-anne Lee—can’t resist a snide comment about Brooks’ refusal to freeze the show until five minutes before the curtain goes up. “Because we’re Cunnningham,” she cracks, referring to revered choreographer Merce Cunningham’s habit of rolling dice just before showtime to determine minor details like lights, running order and décor.
The company’s earned the right to make a few jabs. Brooks is currently running them through the section of Acre where they run across the stage in diagonal lanes and then dive onto their knees to execute a punishing slide that takes them halfway across the room before they pick themselves up to run through it again.
Brooks is silent while his company is dancing and when they finish a section he offers either “great,” or, in one instance, “it’s crap” in a cartoonish German accent to lessen the blow. The aerial shots Busby Berkeley pioneered in early movie musicals inspired much of Acre’s floorwork. Berkeley’s time as Lieutenant in the Army may also hold some sway, as the instinct to lessen a blow isn’t one that comes naturally for Brooks. “We’re actually okay on that slide,” he tries to reassure me later, “We just burn the skin a little bit, but we haven’t been bruising any bones or tearing any ligaments with it. You don’t see that slide too often because it hurts so much.”
The only other sound in the rehearsal space is the occasional snippet of electronic score which is arriving piecemeal from the composer in Ohio and the sounds of the dancers’ bodies—breath, sweat squeaks off the marley, groans—trying to keep up with the extreme physicality of the piece. “The content of the work is really the performers experience in the work,” Brooks explains, “So it’s their exhaustion, their effort, their fatigue, their fight through the piece that brings its content.” When he leaves the studio briefly to quiet a group in the lobby, one almost expects his company to start misbehaving.

The day after Brooks’ rehearsal, Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey open their circus at Madison Square Garden. It’s really not that surprising to see Brooks’ former boss and mentor front and center. Okay, perhaps it’s a little unexpected to see Elizabeth Streb crowded onto the circus train that circles a few lucky children around the three rings before the show, but she draws inspiration from these daredevils under the big top. Her company’s signature piece sends dancers through plate glass. Death-defying is a pre-coffee activity for Streb. “It doesn’t hurt you,” is how she dismisses concern over Brooks’ slide, then adds, “And even if it does, it should hurt. You’re moving around. It’s your job to get hurt, actually. It’s certainly not your job to be careful if you’re a movement artist.” The circus has taken a quick break to move some merch in the lobby, so Streb is only too happy to speak to this point.

“Dancers are so damn careful,” she bitches, and then, remembering we’re talking about Brian Brooks, amends, “Well, not all of them.” And though it’s always hard to replace a good dancer, it was Streb who actually pushed Brooks out of the nest. “When Brian first got to my company,” she recalls, “We went to see one of his solos and I told him he had to choreograph. He’s just so talented and clear thinking about what his ideas are in a very deep and formalist way. He’s not just whimsically moving around. He has a method and a process and he follows it assiduously. He is like the thinking man’s dancer. Most people are still putting ballet steps together. It drives me crazy. I mean 17th century repetition, get over it. I just don’t understand how we can take something like space and not be awed by it.”

“The piece is about deconstructing space,” Brooks echoes back in his office at WAX. The assiduity Streb spoke of is in evidence on the company dartboard. All five darts neatly cohabit the center bull’s eye. And okay, maybe someone tossed them with that level of precision, but there seems to be a more likely culprit. A certificate to do business is framed and hangs neatly on one wall. There’s even a white moving box with precise black magic marker spelling “Brian’s box” across the side.

Would that Brooks were joking when he pronounced Williamsburg over, but the Brian Brooks Moving Company will be doing just that when the lease on WAX expires in a few months. Most of what Streb says is echoed in one way or another by what Brooks thinks about his own work. And neither one of them is fond of the ballet. If Streb is a little up with Brooks, then he’s positively religious about her. He even speaks about her in terms usually reserved for the born-again. “I found Elizabeth Streb and she changed my life,” he says of the move from his native Hingham, Massachusetts to New York City at age 20, “So here we are. What I took from her was form follows function. There are sets of rules and parameters for each piece, almost like a game. You have to get from point A to point B and these are the things you can or can’t do. From an extremely formal thing you can have content. I got really frustrated with narrative, emotion and character. I have trouble with that as a starting place. So the theory she’s interested in was really inspiring to me.”

“I definitely wouldn’t call the work post-modern,” Brooks says of Acre, “It’s bound, not release movement and it doesn’t really feel good. It’s extremely rigorous, like going to the gym. It’s pretty tough and gritty, but because it’s a marked space and it’s green, the title Acre seemed appropriate.” It also seems acres away from his last color-based dance Dance-o-matic that exploded across the stage in a riot of hot pinks.

“Having men in boas and panties has cultural meaning,” Brooks understates, “In order to see something, you need to have contrast. In the pink show we had androgyny whereas in this piece we have men and women as stereotypical men and women, but the movement is abstract. Pink was just by color very vaudevillian,” Brooks continues, “This new piece is about working. We’re not dancing about the earth. It’s a little more movement based. It’s not a narrative,” he laughs, “It’s pretty sports-like in its physicality. A lot of it takes place on the ground—Busby Berkeley style. I don’t think you would really see us in a traditional theater because we’re so low all the time crawling around.”
“I used to live in this dressing room when we first got here five years ago,” Brooks says looking around his office, “God help me. Then the idea of a kitchen and bathroom started to sound really appealing. I still live in Brooklyn. This will be my tenth year in New York. I feel like it’s a big landmark or something.” The rave reviews on Dance-o-matic and the anticipation for his new work barely garner a comment. “It’s curious” is all he offers, then continues, “You’re in context whether you want to be or not. There are definitely trends in dance. Comparatively, the work we’re doing uses different muscle groups. We’re doing simple things that stand out. But there are other people that are working in similar ways. I’m thrilled. When people first see the company they’re saying they haven’t seen this kind of thing before. They get very excited for some reason, but I think that’s just human. Dance, art or politics, we just want new stuff. Fresh ideas, progression, we have this desire to move forward. I don’t know if it’s necessarily good or not, but just because no one’s seen it means that they’re really excited.”

“I’m excited to be paired with Julie Atlas Muz,” Brooks continues of his co-headliner on the DTW bill. As far as the different programming banners DTW runs artists under, Brooks is more demure. There’s Outer Edge, “an interdisciplinary presentation and residency series” pegged to LGBT issues. Something called Carnival is “designed to give artists significant and sustained visibility.” There’s even something called Outerspace. “I’m not really part of what they’re doing. I mean, I’m definitely queer, but having WAX has taught me a lot about marketability. You have a show. You want to fill the house. So it’s that old question, do you make your work with integrity or for certain audiences so you get seats filled? I think we all ask these questions, but I feel like we’ve been making our work with integrity I find that people who present work have to market the work to a group and I don’t think we fit into a specific group.”

Neither one of us wants to say too much more about the marketing of fine arts because we can’t figure out which banner Acre actually falls under, as the DTW materials read much like a menu in a Chinese restaurant. Brooks has a fundamental problem with the DTW banners, anyway. “I love labels,” he jokes, “We should all wear labels. It would be so easy, you know: Black, female, gay.”

Clearly Brooks is snappy and sarcastic, political as an individual. But can you find that in work as formally preoccupied as his? “I get worked up,” he admits, “But I don’t do anything about it. Besides, I don’t have the time. Sometimes the work is political. We’re nationally touring a show with men in pink at a time of war. That could be said to be political. It’s on a sold-out, three-year tour we keep extending. We have had very good experiences on the road. We were just in San Antonio, Texas. We had a very full house, sold out, standing ovations, parties, events, they even lit the building in pink. It was tremendous. People always talk about how repressed everyone is and we all think that we live under this tyrant, but I don’t see it. I’m looking for those people that they talk about in the polls and I think it’s all fabricated. I don’t know any of those people. I can’t find them. I can’t find the people that don’t like men in pink.”