WHAT IF (Premiering Spring 2027)
Choreography and Performance: Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer
Soundscore: Bridgman | Packer with original music by A. Leroy, Naaz Hoseini, Jeff Cook, Martha Mooke, Robert Een, Steve Elson
How do personal and collective histories shape our present and what if, through technology, we found ourselves face-to-face with our past — caught in a moment of reflection of our life’s journey?
Live performance melds with video technology in WHAT IF, a work where present and past collide while asking questions we all wrestle with: What is truth? What is memory? What if your life had unfolded differently? Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have spent four decades pushing the boundaries of live dance-theater and weaving video technology into performance in ways that blur the line between body and image, past and present. Their new work brings them face-to-face with their younger selves, projected through decades of archival footage that appear in the walls of an empty house as an absurdist memory palace and are transformed into an other-worldly virtual landscape of static, distortion, and reimagined memory. Bridgman and Packer co-exist, confront, merge, and move with earlier versions of themselves to interrogate what is real, transform context, and explore alternate outcomes.
WHAT IF is made possible with commissioning support by the Hillsborough College and residency at the University of Rochester, Program of Dance and Movement.
Running Time: TBD (evening length)
Touring Party: 2 dancers, 2 admin/tech
Audio/Video Installation | Untold Stories: A Chronicle of What If’s
Lobby Installation & Community Interaction
In conjunction with the stage performance of WHAT IF, Bridgman and Packer are creating a lobby video installation Untold Stories: A Chronicle of What If’s that will cover the walls and furniture with video imagery featuring interviews of people from various communities about pivotal moments in their life journeys and the circumstances and perspectives that influenced them. Through listening to people’s stories and dialoguing with them, Bridgman and Packer invite the participants to inform the creation process while amplifying their stories. In addition, the interviews will continue in each community where the work is performed, partnering with participants to expand the impact of the installation.
Ghost Factory (2021)
Running Time: 55 minutes
Choreography and Performance: Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer
Video: Peter Bobrow
Costumes: Anna-Alisa Belous
Sound Design and Music Score: Ansel Bobrow
What lingers in a space after we leave, and what happens when those traces begin to move?
For more than 40 years, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have made work unlike anyone else: just the two of them onstage, merging dance and film into a singular, ever-evolving language. Their boundary-blurring dances remain as inventive as ever.
In Ghost Factory, their latest work, live performance and video collide in a world of shifting perspectives and haunted spaces. Inspired by the abandoned factories and residents of Johnson City, New York, the piece conjures a landscape where human stories cling to architecture, and images flicker with the presence of those who came before. Dancers move through and against projected environments that fracture, multiply, and dissolve, creating a mesmerizing interplay of illusion and physicality. Created with longtime collaborators including filmmaker Peter Bobrow, lighting designer Frank DenDanto III, costume designer Anna-Alisa Belous, and composer/sound designer Ansel Bobrow, Ghost Factory unfolds into a living, shifting environment that holds memory, illusion, and human presence all at once.
Running Time: Approx. 55 minutes, no intermission
Touring Party: 2 dancers, 2 admin/tech
Audio/Video Installation | Places With Hidden Stories
Lobby Installation & Community Interaction
In conjunction with the stage performance of Ghost Factory, there is an accompanying audio/visual installation, Places With Hidden Stories, that further brings alive the stories of residents in Johnson City as well as those from each host community. The installation and the stage work reveal how architecture can hold a town’s human stories hidden within its walls.
The creation of Ghost Factory was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Dance Project Finalist Grant Award, and commissioning support from the American Dance Asylum. Bridgman|Packer Dance is a 2020 NDP Finalist Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Ghost Factory premiered, June 2021 at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts in Scottsdale, AZ.
TRUCK (2014, 2017)
Choreography and Performance and Video: Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer
Music: A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Beats Antique
Performed inside a 17-foot box truck, TRUCK brings performance to nontraditional and unexpected locations. Through Bridgman|Packer’s signature integration of live performance and video technology, an ordinary truck evolves from the utilitarian into a reimagined space, a micro-world of visions and transformation. Exploring how context changes perception, the work ranges from evocative to humorous, to sensuous, to surreal. With the audience looking into the bed of the truck from the outside, the work can be performed in parking lots, parks, loading docks, plazas, street corners, or large indoor spaces. TRUCK can be presented in conjunction with stage presentations or as a separate event.
Sections of TRUCK were developed during Fellowships with Experimental Film Virginia 2014, 2017.
Running time: 20 minutes, performed at repeated intervals throughout an evening
Audience size: depends on venue. TRUCK has been performed for audiences ranging from 50 to 1000. Some presenters make some chairs available, others do not. To be discussed with presenter.
Touring Party: 2 dancers
Under the Skin (2005, revised 2014, 2022)
Choreography and Performance: Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer
Music: Ken Field
Video: Peter Bobrow and Jim Monroe
In Under The Skin, the duet form explodes into a magically populated stage as Bridgman and Packer interchange with their ever-multiplying virtual selves. Performers’ bodies and costumes become projection screens, morphing and redefining their identities while revealing psychological depths.
Under the Skin is a co-commissioning project of Contemporary Dance Theater (Cincinnati, OH) in partnership with The Dance Place (Washington, D.C.) and the National Performance Network Creation Fund. The NPN Creation Fund is sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Altria, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The creation of Under the Skin was also supported by funds from the 92nd Street Y New Works in Dance Fund, NYC. Technological support was provided by SUNY Rockland: Communications/Media Arts.
Running time: 26 minutes
Touring Party: 2 dancers, 1 or 2 tech/admin
Interactive Video Installation: Video Playground
This engaging interactive installation invites participants of all ages to experience the magic of Bridgman|Packer Dance up close and personal. Video Playground allows participants to play with scale, juxtaposition of shadow and video imagery and explore the duality and morphing of self and image. This live interactive installation can be projected in public spaces – bringing to life the architecture in a community and new meaning to familiar places.
Running time: Varies
