Description
After the Fall, Desire is a contemporary reflection on the biblical first couple Adam and Eve, and the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box. Choreographed by Jan Bartoszek with an original score by Winston Damon, the dance evokes a primordial time of innocence, raw emotion, and struggle.
The dancers shift from sympathetic co-dependents to feral challengers, enacting the essence of human duality. With powerful lifts that require equal parts control and abandon, the path of this dance offers only brief glimpses of unison and unexpected reversals of partnering. Avoiding a linear narrative in favor of a visceral landscape, the dance highlights the human capacity for kindness and cruelty, savagery and generosity, and creativity and destruction.
Bartoszek premiered After the Fall, Desire for a performance at an exhibit by painter Phyllis Bramson at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Production
Choreographer: Jan Bartoszek
Composer: Stone (Winston Damen)
Costume Design: Judy Lundberg
Cast
Mei-Kuang-Chen & Shannon Preto
Performance(s)
Dance Chicago ‘99
December 3-5, 1999
Athenaeum Theatre
Chicago
FORECAST
November 10-11, 2000
Storefront Theater
Chicago
In the Absence of Restraint dances of dependence and desire
April 6-7, 2001
Athenaeum Theatre
Chicago
Hedwig Reloaded 2003
November 7-8, 2003
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Joyce Soho Theater
April 27-30, 2006
New York City
… a masterful, richly expressionistic duet Adam and Eve. Jan Bartoszek’s complex and powerful choreography (set to a striking score by Winton Damon) was superbly performed by Mei-Kuang Chen, a dancer of tremendous authority, and her fine partner…
— Chicago Sun-Times
Special Thanks
Special thanks to Joan Pangilinan-Taylor and Shannon Preto.
