X (Two Strings)

X (Two Strings) is a cacophony of vibration and memory. The performance attempts to calibrate in a fluctuating field, exploring lineage, symbolism, and embodied artifacts. Sourcing from individual Japanese histories and building upon a multifaceted collaboration between Julian Barnett and musician/performer, Kenta Nagai, a transgressive ceremony blurs lines between music and movement, musician and thespian, and opens planes of sensation for phenomenal bodies, fluid culture, and vulnerable structures. 

When: Thursday - Saturday, Dec 6 - 8 @ 8pm
Where: Gibney Theater, 280 Broadway New York, NY 
Info: https://gibneydance.org/event/doubleplus-julian-barnett-mina-nishimura/2018-12-07/

Choreography by Julian Barnett, in collaboration with Kenta Nagai

Performance by Barnett and Nagai

Sound by Kenta Nagai / Text by Julian Barnett

Dramaturgy by Jocelyn Tobias

Light by Asami Morita

X (two strings) was commissioned by Gibney, with funds provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation. Additional support provided by UVM Dance Program, UArts Dance Program, and ICI-Montpellier, France. The shared evening also includes a new work from the incredible Mina Nishimura.

Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in Northern California, Julian Barnett creates performances that explore the socio-political possibilities for transformation and empathy, through the lenses of philosophy, musicology, science, and the supernatural. He is a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award nominee for his work with choreographer Kota Yamazaki and Jeanine Durning and also a recipient of a US/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, studying at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in Yokohama, and a danceWEB scholar at the Impulstanz Festival in Vienna. Barnett has worked in the international performing arts field as a performer, choreographer, educator, and advocate for over 15 years and continues to collaborate on contemporary perspectives of performance in New York, Europe, Japan, and Burlington, Vermont.