SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS
DANCE-O-MATIC
October 2003

PREPARE TO BE TICKLED “PINK”
Performance a study in contrasts
By Joan Pikula

Picture this: A football team takes the field ready to do battle. The muscled men are rough, they’re tough...and they’re wearing frilly pink tutus.

This is the way Brian Brooks describes his pink production, “Dance-o-Matic,” which bounds into town this weekend.

The work, presented by the Carver Community Cultural Center, is the latest in Brooks’s series of color-themed installations that draw their content from commonly held perceptions of various colors.

“Without anyone having seen any part of the work, just the color pink is so weighted in our society,” Brooks said.

And so, the viewer’s perception falls neatly in line with his approach to creating works, which have been classified as performance pieces, installations, concept shows, and events.

“I believe in contrast,” he says. “With pink, you have something frilly, like bows, ribbons, pink floor, and fluorescent lights, yet the physicality of the movement is brutal. It’s almost as if you’re watching a football game where the players showed up in tutus that day.”

He feels the contrast between the movement and the color image enables the viewers to “see” what they’re looking at.

“The physicality of the piece has a bit of a sports tinge to it,” he says, adding that his “focus is drawn to that kind of group dynamic. There is a designated space, a marked-out area ringed off by fluorescent lights. It’s like a boxing ring. We get into it and do our thing.”

That “thing,” as he explains it, “is a little bit rough-and-tumble.” But it is not undesigned movement.
“We have a nice line, with a lot of running and repetition, a bit of shoving, a lot of effort put forth. It’s important to have the two things in contrast,” he said.

Brooks describes his work as “events that take up time and space, without narrative, without character, without emotions.” Nevertheless, he strives to create “an emotional, thoughtful, enlightening” experience.
“Dance-o-Matic” is set to music by the “wildly talented” John Stone, Brooks’s frequent collaborator; and the anti-establishment songs of Canadian artist Peaches.

Brooks says he works “in a different conceptual way. I don’t title the dances. I’m serious about how we view things as people, when the information we receive before we see something and during and after affects what we think about it.

“Everything is context, and I try to give as little context as possible – figure it out for your self. Go with it for yourself.”