This Page Left Intentionally Blank

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE MENIL COLLECTION

Wed, April 13 – Fri, April 15, 2016 at 2pm
Sat, April 16 and Sun, April 17, 2016 at 12pm and 4pm

The Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross Street
Houston, TX 77006
Get Directions

50 minutes

“The tour aims to revivify the eyes and the body and the ears by looking at the prosaic world of the museum. So when the audience, at last, is set in front of a single work of art, the intention is to see better, to see more, to see anew, to see for yourself.” – Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater

A carefully choreographed viewing of art.

On a journey toward a single work of art, visitors encounter acts of movement, text, sound, throughout the museum, including walls, doorways, paths, corners and objects. With the audience wearing headphones and led by a docent, this performance takes the form of a unique museum tour: one that provokes audiences into a new way of seeing. As headphones focus the mind, and instructions guide you with the precision of choreography, a personal, physical relationship to art begins with elements of misdirection, movement, confession and music.

Beginning in the museum’s main lobby and winding all about The Menil Collection’s unique campus of buildings and satellite installations, This Page Left Intentionally Blank deconstructs the role of the docent and the museum audio tour, subverting how visitors observe art in a museum. Walls are no longer simply walls: a parade of changing perspectives invades the in-between spaces of the museum as visitors are led toward this single artwork—what will happen and how will you respond once you get there? Will you be prepared to confront this work of art, already set deep in your imagination by the journey there? Are you ready to see anew?

NOTE: Each audience group is limited to 20 people; the audience meets in the lobby of The Menil Collection. The performance occurs during museum hours. Recommended for ages 14 and up

Created by Big Dance Theater, Tei Blow, and Suzanne Bocanegra

Founded in 1991, Big Dance Theater is known for its inspired use of dance, music, text and visual design. The company often works with wildly incongruent source material, weaving and braiding disparate strands into multi-dimensional performance. Led by co-artistic directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, Big Dance Theater has created more than twenty dance/theater works, generating each in collaboration with associate artists, a long-standing, ever-evolving group of actors, dancers, composers and designers.

Past Mitchell Center Suzanne Bocanegra presentation: Bodycast (CounterCurrent 2015), Rerememberer (CounterCurrent 2014), When a Priest Marries a Witch (2011). Past Mitchell Center Big Dance Theater presentation: The Other Here (2007).

“It’s hard to do justice to the freewheeling brilliance of Big Dance Theater.”
-The New York Times

Opened in 1987, The Menil Collection, with 30,000 square feet of gallery space illuminated by natural light, houses a world of art, from the prehistoric to the present day. Today, the Menil’s campus includes seven separate buildings, two institutions and neighborhood public parks.

Lead funding for This Page Left Intentionally Blank has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award program, with additional support from Big Dance Theater’s Creation Circle.

Interview with Annie–B Parson, co-artistic director of Big Dance Theater
November 2015

Mitchell Center: Where did the idea for This Page Left Intentionally Blank come from?

Annie–B Parson: The idea came from a conversation with a museum curator. My initial idea was that we would set up a highly complex and structured improvisation around re-enacting a 1960s movie in a gallery. Later, that idea was discussed with a curator in a different museum and she asked why we wouldn’t include the art work if we were in a museum—in other words, why make a white box into a black box? It intrigued me to change the concept to include not just the artwork, but the building itself.

Mitchell Center: How has the work evolved from initial inspiration?

Annie–B Parson: I got very happy, aka focused, around the idea of building the piece around one single work of art. I personally have durational concentration problems in a museum and typically I find that I only have a deep experience with a single work of art. The rest of the museum gets blurry.

Rehearsal became a collaboration with a small group of performers and designers around the idea of the group walking to the artwork as a non-hierarchical viewing experience. We ended up building the piece in small cells of experiences that occur throughout the architecture of the building, choreographing what would induce the audience toward a careful viewing of the museum building—and how the audience could be physically engaged. So it wasn’t a “neck-up” experience. Yes, there is a dance. For everyone. In fact, in a way, the whole piece is a group dance.

Mitchell Center: Is there a story?

Annie–B Parson: The story is “seeing.”

Mitchell Center: How are you incorporating the art into the experience?

Annie–B Parson: Through obfuscation, through re-location of ideas, through confusion, through movement, through sound and music, we steer the audience to simply see. We don’t impose history or culture or data on the art work. We warm up the eyes and the body and the ears by looking at the prosaic world of the museum so when the audience at last is set in front of a single work of art, the intention is to see better, to see more, to see anew, to see for yourself.

Mitchell Center: What does docent-as-performer allow you to play with? And why headphones?

Annie–B Parson: The docent is the single live performer, beside the audience. The docent herself serves as a meta performance to the museum and the art. The audio headphones are a museum trope to be sure, but we are not using them as they are typically used in museums. Audio headphones focus the mind. They dilate what you do hear and omit everything else. You go into your own cocoon when you wear them. And they allow us to direct the audience very specifically in their actions. We are re-thinking what the audio tour and the docent could do and be.

Mitchell Center: How does the Menil appeal to you as a location?

Annie–B Parson: We are planning on using the lobby and the walk to the Dan Flavin building. We are then going to enter the Flavin building for the finale of the piece. And then exit the building for the denouement. The campus of the building should animate the architecture of the journey of the piece itself.

WORLD PREMIERE: This Page Left Intentionally Blank | April 13, 2016 | University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
CounterCurrent Festival (April 12-17, 2016) at The Menil Collection | Houston, TX