TIME OUT NEW YORK
September 1997

DO THE HUSTLE
150 choreographers spread themselves thin for Dance Now ‘97
By Gia Kourlas

“I don’t know how crazy I am about the mascot title,” Brian Brooks confesses uneasily. “I won’t be wearing a dog mask or anything. Maybe some wings, though.”

Wishful thinking. As the appointed “mascot” of the dance portion of the Downtown Arts Festival, Brooks (of the Brian Brooks Moving Company), who’s no stranger to site specific performance, must appear at each event. Since the festival – formerly the SoHo Arts Festival – has doubled in size from last year (from 75 choreographers to 150), Brooks could use some heavenly help getting from one space to the next.
Cocurator-directors Robin Staff and Tamara Greenfield chose Brooks to be the festival’s spokesperson after hearing about a dance he performed at 11 sites in one day. “He presented the same piece to see how dance changed with different environments and audiences,” Greenfield says. “We appreciated his creativity and thought it would be fun to do the same thing with our festival.”

Brooks has created something entirely different. His “Just Add Water” is an ongoing site-specific work he develops anew at each venue. Without rehearsing or even knowing how many dancers will show up at each event – the number of performers can range from two to 20 – Brooks will choreograph on the spot.
“It’s not improvisation,” he explains. “We’re learning a complete piece, but we’ll be learning it, setting it to music and performing it, all within 15 minutes in front of an audience. All the movement phrases I’ll be giving the dancers will relate directly to the space that we’re in. It might take place on the stairs or on a windowsill.”

Brooks is more interested in capturing spontaneity than in perfecting technique. “As dancers, we often work under the clock; sometimes we’re required to pick up movement incredibly fast. I’m often impressed that we do, and (that) we retain it, so the piece is kind of an exploration and a test of that stamina and strength.”

At 23, Brooks is on the young side to be a choreographer; then again, he did start when he was 14. “It was three years before I started training,” he recalls. “I just like to move, I suppose. I had no technique, and I didn’t know the rules of dance. Some people said that was good – because I wasn’t bound by them, which I agree with – but I think it’s important to find a balance between technique and the natural motion of the body. That’s what the idea of thos project is: to tap into the excitement, energy and passion of moving, not worrying so much about the technique and specificity of it. The rough edges are what intrigue me.”