(1999) After the Fall, Desire

Description

After the Fall, Desire is an enchanting, sensual duet choreographed by Jan Bartoszek in 1999. Inspired by the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the Fruit of Knowledge, as well as the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box, the piece evokes a primordial time of innocence, raw emotion, and violent passion.
Accompanied by the tribal music of Winston Damon, the dancers shift from sympathetic co-dependants 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 tantalizing, 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.

I created After the Fall, Desire for a performance at an exhibit by artist Phyllis Bramson at the Chicago Cultural Center. The dance is a contemporary reflection on the biblical first couple Adam and Eve. -Jan Bartoszek

Production

Cast