Home of Hope’ to Park Avenue Armory

Wherefore artwork thou Romeo?

Anne Imhof’s new efficiency piece “Doom: Home of Hope,” lets a number of Romeos reply — and leaves audiences to untangle their very own “why” throughout the three-hour runtime.

Shakespearean characters, rendered in a stark aesthetic, seem in vignettes all through the Park Avenue Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Corridor, outfitted with a fleet of black SUVs parked all through the hazy house. Early on, Romeo seems behind a black Cadillac pickup truck, imbibing a shot alongside Juliet, whereas one other Romeo will get tattooed atop the neighboring SUV. Different solid members — Mercutios, Benvolios, Tybalts, dancers and different creatives — climb on and into different vehicles across the room, the place performers maintain prolonged dance poses, smoke and browse aloud from their cellphone screens. 

The present opens with a “funeral march” for Romeo and Juliet because the ensemble solid advances towards the viewers, ready behind barricades. As soon as eliminated, company are left to wander across the room and discover their very own positions to absorb the efficiency. A jumbotron in the course of the house broadcasts how a lot time stays, ticking down from three hours in pink numbers.

However “Doom” isn’t about presenting audiences a pared-down Gen Z rendition of “Romeo & Juliet,” although audiences will have the ability to acknowledge the acquainted storyline all through the efficiency. 

“I attempted to make a reasonably plotless piece, with a powerful narration of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” says Imhof of her largest efficiency piece to this point, which pulls characters and damaged excerpts of textual content from Shakespeare’s textual content.

The artist is on the Park Avenue Armory a number of days earlier than the world premiere of “Doom,” a wide-ranging work that explores themes of division and unity. The SUVs are already parked all through the drill corridor house, whereas Jacob Madden, one in all Imhof’s many “Doom” collaborators, stands subsequent to an upright piano on a raised stage on one aspect of the room.

“It’s at all times a lot simpler in my head when the others are usually not but concerned,” says Imhof, describing a second of inventive kismet that emerged whereas working with Madden to develop the rating for the present’s ballet, impressed by a Bach partita. “However it will get so a lot better after they’re concerned. There’s a whole lot of potential as a result of individuals are so extraordinarily expert and gifted.”

“Doom: Home of Hope” unfolds by way of spoken efficiency, ballet and flexing choreography, rap and music, skateboarding, drawing, images and different inventive disciplines. Imhof additionally integrated inspiration from the work of Jerome Robbins, Balanchine, Sinatra, Radiohead, Jean Genet and others.

Imhof took a collaborative method to growing the three-hour durational piece alongside her massive solid of creatives. Her two “leads” — a unfastened designation within the context of the manufacturing, the place the focus stays fluid all through its length — are younger actors Talia Ryder and Levi Strasser, who got creative license to pluck their traces from Shakespeare’s textual content.

In Imhof’s model, “Romeo and Juliet” turns into Romeos and Juliets. A number of performers — of all genders — tackle the function of Romeo. The ballet efficiency introduces one other Juliet by way of dancer Remy Younger, and ABT principal Devon Teuscher takes the stage as one other Romeo. The manufacturing additionally prominently options Imhof’s frequent collaborator (and Balenciaga muse) Eliza Douglas, who serves as assistant director and oversaw costume design, along with performing.   

“Doom,” carried out by way of March 12, builds upon Imhof’s canon of labor, from her Golden Lion-winning “Faust” efficiency piece throughout the 2017 Venice Biennial to exhibitions that spotlight the non-live facet of her apply. A survey of her work, “Want You Had been Homosexual,” was mounted on the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria final yr.

“I feel I’m at all times ranging from the piece that I did final,” says Imhof. Her 2022 exhibition “Youth,” initially supposed for the Storage Museum of Up to date Artwork in Moscow, as an alternative debuted on the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in mild of the conflict, and impressed the spatial method of “Doom.” 

“We did one thing right here for the Armory that mainly leaves the Armory as-is, after which pretends one thing occurred outdoors,” says Imhof, nodding to the militaristic have an effect on of a set design dominated by black SUVs. (Courtesy of Cadillac, the manufacturing sponsor for the present.)

As recommended by the title of the piece, the efficiency explores themes of division and opposition. Throughout the manufacturing, the solid is split into completely different “Homes,” their affiliations demonstrated by way of call-and-response chants and later solidified by way of a fancy dress change that evokes highschool sport workforce uniforms. The group chants, or “drills,” underscore the similarities inside opposing phrases like “I would like self-discipline” and “I wish to disappear,” which grow to be indistinguishable when voiced concurrently. 

Throughout the Drill Corridor, two extra homes emerge: the solid and the viewers. The boundary is blurred as audiences are left to wander the house as they want and given free reign to report photograph and video. The performers observe go well with, recording themselves and one another through a telephone that’s handed round, and the intimate video footage is sometimes televised in actual time on the room’s central screens. 

“ I actually simply need them to have the ability to get misplaced and never get pissed off about wandering round and never understanding,” says Imhof of bringing audiences into the efficiency. “There’s a whole lot of difficult facets on this work, and I really need this to not overtake. I do know I’m asking rather a lot from an viewers that isn’t used to my work, and I’d love them to simply get misplaced in it, and discover their very own manner and discover their very own positions to see it.”

One other grouping, Home of Swans, emerges within the last-act ballet and represents a second of unity. Whereas “Doom” is within the present title, it’s the “hope” piece that Imhof in the end lets linger.

 ”On this very second, all people simply needs to essentially stick collectively and desires to make a gesture of hope,” says Imhof, reflecting on the method of working together with her collaborators to carry “Doom: Home of Hope” to life. “We’re right here, and we all know what we consider in.”