Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church

An almost completely bare stage, three men dressed in black tunics, palpable tension. The charismatic trio officiates at a liturgy of the body that conjures the mythical Judson Church in 1963. With Made-to-Measure, the New Yorker Trajal Harrell offers a splendid conclusion to his dance cycle, creating an imagined encounter between the formalism of postmodern dance, the grandeur of a chorus of mourners, and the flamboyance of voguers.

Constrained movements, muted gestures, charged emotion. Suddenly the ambience of a vogue ball disperses the tragic tone and the stage becomes a podium, the movements more pronounced, exuberant, cathartic. After (M)imosa (2012) and Antigone Sr. (2014), which left a lasting impression on the minds of festivalgoers, the choreographer pursues his fascinating work of memory that poses the same question, but this time in reverse. What would have happened if the Greenwich Village dancers found themselves in Harlem at a voguing ball? Minimalism, tragedy and lascivious poses jostle together in this conceptual experimentation that evokes historically charged traditions and alludes to racial segregation in a celebration of the avant-garde, as well as Afro-American and queer culture. History indeed made to measure.