Dancer of the Year
Trajal Harrell
Due to artist's indisposition, unfortunately the December 17 performance is cancelled, and cannot be rescheduled. Anyone who has purchased a ticket will be refunded. Details will be communicated via email within a few days. For any information: biglietteria@triennale.org
For the last twenty years, the US choreographer and dancer Trajal Harrell, one of the most admired and renowned dancers on the global scene, has been reimagining the history of contemporary dance and its subcultures through his strikingly original choreography. The Dancer of the Year solo came in response to his nomination for “dancer of the year” which he received from Tanz Magazine in 2018. The award sparked deep reflection in Harrell about his own career path and about the value of dance as an artistic practice. From this there emerged a highly personal piece of choreography in which the American dancer reveals himself bit by bit, reflecting on the political dimension of dance and on putting one's identity on stage.
Trajal Harrell gained international recognition for creating a series of works that bring together the tradition of voguing – a modern dance style developed in the late 1980s from the Harlem ballroom scene (New York) – with early postmodern dance. In his latest work, the artist combines theoretical ideas from voguing with gestures formal ideas that deriveg from butō dance, which was conceived in Japan during the late 50’s and early 60’s. Weaving the links between two seemingly distant dance cultures, the artist puts the body at the centre of his research exploring the ways in which it becomes a receptacle of memory, the past and historical characters who have inspired this work. Intertwining notions of time, history and transcultural references, it reveals the multitude of layers that make up the richness of history of contemporary dance. Currently, Harrell is one of the house directors at The Schauspielhaus Zurich and the founding director of The Schauspielhaus Zurich Dance Ensemble. His many awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Impact Award and a Bessie Award.