Judson Church Is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) / Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (M2M)

Trajal Harrell first gained international recognition for a series of works that brought together the tradition of voguing and American postmodern dance. In subsequent pieces, he has combined formal and theoretical ideas drawn from butoh and modern dance. Weaving connections between different dance histories, Harrell places the body at the centre of his practice, exploring how it becomes a vessel for memory, speculation, past and present, and for the historical figures that inhabit and inspire his work. Interlacing temporalities, imagined histories and transcultural references, he reveals the multiplicity of narratives that shape the histories of art and contemporary dance.

The Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at The Judson Church cycle, inspired in part by Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning (1990), explores the imagined encounter between the worlds of voguing and American postmodern dance. Judson Church Is Ringing in Harlem (Made-to-Measure) is the bespoke version of this larger project. Through a choreographic fiction, Harrell imagines what might have emerged had these two traditions actually met.
Created for three performers, the work brings together the formal rigour and minimalism of postmodern dance with the extravagance, theatricality and performative force of voguing. By combining these contrasting vocabularies, it also repositions the influence of jazz, funk and rhythm and blues within the improvisational practices that helped shape the emergence of postmodern dance.