In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

186 | A Dance Turns Darker, Its Maker More American New York Times, October 28, 2001 When I asked Patricia Hoffbauer to dance with me in 1991, I had no idea she would develop into such an outrageous performance artist. She managed to combine an almost slapstick humor with a scholar’s erudition. Her duets with George Sanchez poked delicious fun at the budding fields of performance theory and cultural identity studies. In addition to the cultural aspects that came up, the value of this story is what Patricia says about the effect of 9/11. Although it’s meant to be personal, she captures the magnitude of the terrorist attack for all New Yorkers. Patricia now dances with Yvonne Rainer. If you cross Carmen Miranda with Lenny Bruce and Tina Turner, you might come up with Patricia Hoffbauer. A lusciously physical dancer with a theatrical face and a deep voice, she spices up performances with witty, sometimes raunchy rants. When she gets worked up, her body undulates for added emphasis . She has collaborated with the choreographers Ron K. Brown,CathyWeis, and Sara Rudner, among others. (In their student days at New York University , she worked with the playwright Tony Kushner.) In the mid-nineties she teamed up with the actor George Emilio Sanchez for The Architecture of Seeing , a hilarious example of deconstruction as entertainment. In that piece Hoffbauer and Sanchez embodied the postmodern idea that performance “unpacks,” or challenges, cultural assumptions. Sanchez wore a kind of tribal diaper and a warrior-like look on his face. Hoffbauer, as a wacky hostess/scholar, claimed him as “my work.” He was the hunted, she the huntress.The performers exemplified artists as educators and presented cultural stereotypes as quarries to be excavated, creating a kind of Saturday Night Live for eggheads. Hoffbauer, forty-one, is now preparing a new quartet for Dance Theater Workshop’s “Around Town” series at the Duke Theater on Thursday through next Sunday. Departing from the performance art duets she created with Sanchez (who is also her companion), she seeks to mesh her interests in social issues with a commitment to dance experimentation. Her latest piece, Over My Dead Body, as seen in recent rehearsals, occasionally erupts into funny or brazen dialogue, but that is only one element in a fabric of sensual dancing (sometimes a samba sneaks in), inventive partnering, and Brazilian folk and pop music. Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Hoffbauer studied with Tatiana Leskova, From 2000 to 2004 | 187 a former principal of Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe, and with Graciela Figueroa, who had danced with Twyla Tharp. Figueroa made an indelible impression on the young Hoffbauer, who headed to New York to discover the roots of the former Tharp dancer’s magic. “She was the epitome of freedom,” Hoffbauer said recently of Figueroa. “She was completely abstract but incredibly powerful, like an Amazon. It wasn’t muscle power; she was flight. We would perform in the streets, this band of women with a very intimate, wonderful feeling. One time, at a beach in Bahia, these men made a circle around us and stood there like they wanted to kill us. She was not political and yet she provoked so much”—she paused—“destabilization.” Figueroa was her inspiration to do, as Hoffbauer put it, “just dancing” in a way that showed boldness of spirit. That same sense of power through dancing together has surfaced again in the new work. About her current group of dancers—Peggy Gould, Mary Spring, and Francisco Rider da Silva—she said: “They are the people I’m connected with now. Dance is the place where that human connection can happen.You’re holding everybody’s sweat and you’re smelling their feet. It’s the most intimate you can be with somebody without being in a relationship .” She described coming to rehearsal the day after the World Trade Center attacks, feeling lost and devastated. But, she said, “When I went home after rehearsal, I had a little more room to withstand the tragedy.” The title, Over My Dead Body, was originally meant to be a tongue-incheek reflection on herown stubbornness. As Hoffbauer said, “I love making fun of myself, and making fun of everybody else, but starting with me.” Since September 11, however, the title has taken on a somber meaning. Hoffbauer continues to be affected by the terrorist attacks. “I have reached a level of sadness that I cannot digest anymore,” she said. “I don’t...

Share