Why Patterns is a collaboration with choreographer Jonah Bokaer and the design firm SNARKITECTURE, led by Daniel Arsham and Alex Mustonen. The visual design emerges from a single ping-pong ball that is introduced into a frame on stage, initiating a series of choreographed games. Unpredictable results trigger events that flood the stage with thousands of balls, which are manipulated by the movements of the four dancers as the square frame is collapsed. Why Patterns is a new choreography for stage, gallery, and alternative exhibition space. The project examines pattern recognition, design, and perceptual faculties as they apply to the human body and visual imaging. The work explores many different art forms under the headings of Dance, Performance, Sculpture, Architecture, and Lighting Design. The collaborating artists will use techniques that include choreography, stage design, and musical reconstruction, while expanding the traditional roles of each. This work is to be collaborative between choreographer and visual designer, and is to be experimental in the forms it produces.

The solo RECESS, a collaboration between choreographer Jonah Bokaer and artist/architect Daniel Arsham is a constantly evolving and fluid dialogue between the two, exploring movement, representation, temporality, memory, and space. While never the same performance from venue to venue, each iteration of RECESS looks at the historical work of art, dance and architecture through the combined solo and collaborated work of Bokaer and Arsham. Through conversation, video, and performance, ideas and statements are built upon utilizing still and moving images of both artists’ work, as well as each of them explicitly and implicitly performing for the audience. With measured movements, intentional ellipses, improvisational performativity, and some interventions into the venue, the artists seek to engage the audience into a deeper relationship than that of either a strict performance.