Catherine Tharin Dance to present World Premiere of In the Wake of Yes
Company:
Catherine Tharin Dance to present World Premiere of In the Wake of Yes
This June, choreographer Catherine Tharin will premiere In the Wake of Yes, a work for four dancers, commissioned by Harrison J. Weisner, that delves into themes of connection, memory, and change. In the Wake of Yes features a film by award-winning filmmaker Lora Robertson, music by renowned composer and jazz pianist Joel Forrester, who will play live, and audio creation by Allan Hunter. Costumes are by Colleen Howland. A show has been added on Saturday, June 7. Additionally, the program will now only include the evening-length premiere, In the Wake of Yes.
A quartet, In the Wake of Yes moves through connection, memory, and change. Created in response to Joel Forrester’s expressive score, the 60-minute work unfolds through solos, duets, a trio, and a quartet—each shaped by the emotional presence of dancers Dylan Baker, Hannah Kearney, Jenny Levy, Daniel Morimoto (on film) and Jack Murphy. While rooted in personal experience, the work reaches beyond autobiography. What emerges is a quiet reflection on how we move with and alongside each other.
The title In the Wake of Yes suggests both affirmation and aftermath—what follows a moment of acceptance or surrender. The word wake carries a dual resonance: the trail left behind as something moves forward, and the stillness or reckoning that follows a passage. The dance unfolds within this ambiguity, asking what remains in the wake of a goodbye. The word yes itself echoes through the work in many forms, including a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses—Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy, which repeats “yes” more than 80 times. Its inclusion deepens the meditation on assent, longing, and the complexities of love that animate the piece. Actor Patrick FitzGerald and Dubliner and Brown professor Michelle Clayton read selections from the soliloquy.
A film by Tharin’s longtime collaborator Lora Robertson, The Window of This Night Train is Dark Behind the Glass, accompanies the dance. Her visual world follows the dancers from above and afar seen from the Roosevelt Island tram, the Queensboro Bridge, the NYC ferry, trains along the Hudson River, and in the Rockaways, by the ocean, among boulders, and through wide expanses of grass. These shifting cinematic landscapes mirror the dance’s emotional arcs, suggesting a sense of passage—through time, through memory, through place. Fjord Review called Robertson’s 2023 film, The Stream Wet Earth (conceived by Tharin), “a gorgeous collage of beguiling figurative imagery”—a sensibility that resonates throughout this new collaboration.
Harrison Weisner, Executive Producer. The season is presented by The Bang Group, David Parker and Jeff Kazin, co-founders.
