DANCE/NYC
"Near Life Experience"
Nov 3, 8pm
Nov 4-6, 7:30pm

The U.S. premiere of choreographer Angelin Preljocaj's "Near Life Experience." This full-evening work explores how an instant of abandon -- a fainting spell, an ecstatic moment, a trance, an orgasm -- offers the opportunity for both intense bodily sensation and detachment.

Set to an original composition by French electronica duo Air, "Near Life Experience" focuses on altered states of mind and soul. Through precisely rendered movements, nine performers travel a delicate line veering from tense physical contact to spiritual, body-abandoning sensations, as corporeal realities give way to the transcendent.

There will be no intermission, so, make sure you keep that in mind, before the transcendent boomerangs back to corporeal realities.

Angelin Preljocaj commentary, via official site:

"Near Life Experience" is a quest into different states of the body, states which relate to intermediary sensations. We verge on these states when we near zones which hover on the edge of existence, to which we have access in moments of fainting, during a trance, in the instant of ecstasy, or orgasm.

The notion of both rapture and ravishment, of both intensely luminous sensation and the carrying off of the individual, comes close to this experience. The subject is elsewhere, carried off from himself, he is ravished.

"Near Life Experience" evokes all of this, an attempt to remove oneself from space and time. A sort of eclipse of the self, a quest through this imaginary amnios - a new expression in the space left by the body.

Photo: Guy Delahaye

Find it: BAM - Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Get info: (718) 636-4100

Find out about other dance events in the OCT/NOV issue of "Arte Six".