We - Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon Work-in-Progress Performance Featuring Fairfield University Faculty - Friday, May 6 at 7:00 PM

Pay What You Decide: You reserve your space and pay what you decide following the Work-in-Progress Performance as a social experiment as you decide the value of the art.

This multi-artist, hybrid performance/lecture utilizes text, video, installation, and the body to reflect on intersecting themes within classical Cambodian dance, American postmodern dance, ecology, and astronomy. Each theme is embedded within and geographically reflects specific cultures and ecologies. At the core of this remarkable project is a comparative lens on humankind’s relationship to the natural world.

Emily Coates and Emmanuèle Phuon are professionally trained artists who are internationally recognized for their choreographic work. After years of dancing together in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s and Yvonne Rainer’s companies, they were reunited through a shared research fellowship at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division/New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Now, they have come together to create a moving evening-length event that will “connect the theatrical stage to outdoor milieu.”

Beginning at the Quick Center, the first part of the evening features Emmanuèle Phuon as she reflects on the relationships between memory, nature, and dance, directed by Vincent Dunoyer. She will be joined by Amelia Dawe Sanders. Afterwards, the audience will move to the Bellarmine Lawn under the stars to experience the second half of the program. Emily Coates will link cosmic dances and astronomy with the help of Fairfield University assistant professor of physics Pierre Christian and musician Charlie Burnham, with dramaturgy and direction by Ain Gordon.