The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in the New York Public Library is a little crazy. Monica Bill Barnes & Company Lunch dancewhich travels throughout the library and is inspired by its extensive collection.
The company's acclaimed artistic director, choreographer and performer Monica Bill Barnes, as well as writer and performer Robbie Saenz de Viteri, showcasing location-specific works in many unusual places (Metropolitan Museum of Art, shopping centers, conference rooms, conference rooms and interactive websites), but created an interesting challenge for Schwarzman architecture but has created a job for them. “Libraries are not built for us to do something like this,” Saenz de Viteri told Observer. “We are rubbing against library culture in every possible way. You shouldn't play music, you shouldn't dance, you shouldn't do everything you need to perform.”
Barnes and Saenz de Viteri invited Brent Reidy, a director of the New York Public Library Research Library, a longtime fan of his work. He envisioned performances as an unexpected way to tell library stories and encouraged them to use the collection as a source of inspiration. “It's a tough task,” Barnes said. “It's like saying 'Let everything in the world be your inspiration.' But Robbie found an incredible way.”
See also: Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite takes center stage in mom Paris
Saenz de Viteri's way comes from the poet Frank O'Hara. “All things I wrote for my performances, he has always been accidental, not intentional, and has always been influenced by me,” he explained. He decided to start his research by looking at the library's O'Hara's project, which included personal letters, postcards and dramas in dance performances that the poet saw. Saenz de Viteri discovered many exchanges between O'Hara and his circle of friends and experimental writers and artists, known as the New York Academy of Poets and Painters. Soon, the group's location (downtown Manhattan) and period (1950s and 1960s) became the seeds of the program's written narrative. title, Lunch dancea respect for O'Hara's famous books Lunch poem. Saenz de Viteri assured us: “But you don't need to know Frank O'Hara or anything from that period to understand what's going on in the show.”
Barnes' approach is very different. “My 'research' is finding my way into every room in the library,” she said. “I really need to, want to understand how each room feels physically.” She described the process as akin to doing a fishing adventure, discovering something that was interesting and surprised in all available spaces.
After internalizing the physical form of the library, Barnes turned to collectibles. She is also a fan of poetry, and he asked the poet Donald Hall’s “Ephemera” folder, which contains artifacts such as cancellation checks, personal letters and Christmas cards. Her inspiration is to juxtapose in a quiet space and browse someone’s very personal and occasional items while having an amazing internal discovery experience. To mimic this experience, she created “emotionally explosive dances that also stand in a way.”
She said the two creators produced a lot of material “at the same time, in parallel.” The movement and the text are related to their years-long conversations about the libraries, New York schools, in Manhattan in the 1950s and 1960s, but while Saenz de Viteri's text is rooted in the base, Barnes's choreography is more abstract.
When I asked Barnes how to turn the series’ items into action, she said, “I absolutely didn’t do that.” Since 1961, a piece of dance has been around the map of New York City. “It’s very important, but the dance doesn’t reference maps or time periods,” the feeling and experience of the map remains. “It makes so meaningful, but even we have a little confusing relationship with our collaboration, which is somewhat abstract form, and the way of writing is more anchored in the actual things.”
Ultimately, Barnes and Saenz de Viteri bring their actions and texts to the inspiration of these objects and characters in the collection, and it is clear that the “story”, both physically and verbally, has similar emotional sensibilities. “Language and movement can sometimes be a bit like a label,” Barnes said. “Writing takes you to a certain level, then dancing takes you further, and then writing, we cumulatively – we hope – to create this profound emotional experience based on collections and experiences in the library.”
As for how to perform an hour-long performance in a public place that does not belong, the audience and performers wear headphones (connecting them in an independent, intimate world), they hear music and live narratives by Saenz de Viteri. The audience had a cap of 15 people per show, followed 16 performers, through the building, through which they experienced selected items from the collection related to O'Hara and his friends. Sometimes the audience watches, sometimes they listen, sometimes they do both.
“I think we’re trying to educate our audience on how to embrace language and movement and make them both meaningful,” Barnes said. “To understand that they live side by side and that they’re not representing each other, they’re building and relating to each other.”
Barnes believes the shows cause an exciting disruption, not only for the library’s customers, but for the performers. “This project requires that. In the art, this moment requires that. Generosity and openness to the work. A certain kind of perseverance and sincerity.”
The company will perform twenty-four times in the library in two weeks. “But it won't be the same show as we do multiple times,” Barnes said. “I think we're going to have twenty-four adventures, and each time it's going to be different.”
Lunch dance Located in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (476 Fifth Avenue), NYPL, Monday to Saturday 11:30 a.m. and May 17, 2025 at 1:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.
