92NY Harkness Dance Center Presents Bridgman | Packer Dance: Ghost Factory, New York City Premiere
Company:
92NY
The 92nd Street Y, New York, presents Bridgman | Packer Dance’s Ghost Factory, in its New York City premiere. Performances are on November 20 and 21 at 7 pm in Buttenwieser Hall at the Arnold Center, with tickets available at https://www.92ny.org/event/bridgman-packer-dance.
For more than 40 years, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have made work unlike anyone else: just the two of them onstage, merging dance and film into a singular, ever-evolving language. Today, their boundary-blurring dances remain as inventive as ever.
In Ghost Factory, their latest work, live performance and video collide in a world of shifting perspectives and haunted spaces. Inspired by the abandoned factories and residents of Johnson City, New York, the piece conjures a landscape where human stories cling to architecture, and images flicker with the presence of those who came before. Dancers move through and against projected environments that fracture, multiply, and dissolve, creating a mesmerizing interplay of illusion and physicality.
What lingers in a space after we leave,
and what happens when those traces begin to move?
Created with longtime collaborators including filmmaker Peter Bobrow, lighting designer Frank DenDanto III, costume designer Anna-Alisa Belous, and composer/sound designer Ansel Bobrow, Ghost Factory unfolds as a fully immersive experience.
Extending into and through 92NY’s Harkness Dance Center, is Places with Hidden Stories, an accompanying audiovisual installation that brings into vivid focus stories from residents of Johnson City, NY who inspired Ghost Factory. This installation also includes factory stories from places around the country where Ghost Factory has been performed and a NYC hidden story of the Lower East Side tenement apartment where Myrna's father was born during the time when her grandfather worked in the fur factories.
Part of 92NY’s Home season, Bridgman | Packer Dance takes on 92NY’s newly renovated home, transforming it into a living, shifting environment that holds memory, illusion, and human presence all at once.
Places With Hidden Stories will be open for viewing an hour before and after the performance of Ghost Factory.
92NY Harkness Dance Center recognizes the ongoing generosity of The Harkness Foundation for Dance. Major funding is provided by Jody and John Arnhold | Arnhold Foundation; and The New York Community Trust. Additional support is provided by The Howard Gilman Foundation; The Mertz Gilmore Foundation; The Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, Inc.; The Jerome Robbins Foundation; SHS Foundation; Barbara J. Sinclair; and an anonymous donor.
Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer, Co-Artistic Directors of Bridgman | Packer Dance, have collaborated in choreography and performance since 1978. Decades later, they continue to be a vital and present voice in the dance ecosystem. In 2001, they expanded their choreographic vision, stretching the boundaries of dance by merging it with video technology. They continue to receive international critical praise for seamlessly melding these two art forms. In 2017, they received a New York Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Production (The Bessies) for their work Voyeur at The Sheen Center.
The 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship awarded to Bridgman and Packer was the first in the history of the Guggenheim Foundation to be given to two individuals for their collaborative work. Bridgman and Packer are recipients of twelve grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (2007-2021) and grants from New England Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, National Dance Project, USArtists International, Performing Americas Project, and La Red. They have received three Choreography Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (including 2022), four National Performance Network Creation Fund Awards, and choreographic commissions from Dance Theater Workshop (now New York Live Arts), Portland Ovations, Danspace Project, American Dance Asylum, and The 92nd Street Y New Works in Dance Fund.
Based in New York City, they have been presented by City Center Fall For Dance Festival, Lincoln Center, The Baryshnikov Arts Center, The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop (now NYLA), Danspace Project, The Sheen Center, and Central Park's Summerstage.
They have toured throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America, performing in festivals, art centers, and universities. These include:
Spoleto Festival USA
Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival
Munich International Dance Festival
The Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston
The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts (St. Paul)
Festival Internacional de Artes Escénicas (Panama)
Aronoff Center for the Arts (Cincinnati)
Bates Dance Festival
Kintetsu Theater (Osaka, Japan)
Festival Internacional Chihuahua, Encuentro en la Cultura (Mexico)
Tancforum (Budapest)
Beirut Spring Festival (Lebanon)
High Fest International Arts Festival (Armenia)
Offering workshops in their unique approach to Contemporary Dance Partnering and Live Performance with Video Technology, Bridgman and Packer have been guest artists at over one hundred and fifty universities, including New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, The Juilliard School, California Institute of the Arts, Ohio State University, Arizona State University, and the University of Utah. Bridgman and Packer are recipients of a Dance Theater Workshop Digital Fellowship. They have been highlighted in Dance Magazine's issue on "Great Partnerships." Their work in live performance and video technology is featured in the book Gegenwelten, Zwischen Differenz und Reflexion (Against Worlds, Between Difference and Reflection) by Jurgen Schlader and Franziska Weber, published in Munich in 2009. Bridgman | Packer Dance's New York City Season at The Sheen Center was chosen as "Best Of 2016" in both The Village Voice and Huffington Post, and their performance at Dallas City Performance Hall was chosen as "Best of 2017" by theatrejones.com.
About The 92nd Street Y, New York: The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY’s programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit www.92NY.org.
