Bon Iver, TU Dance to present new work at MoCA shows

Posted Friday, March 16, 2018 3:33 pm

NORTH ADAMS — Details are scarce for next weekend's collaboration between Grammy award-winning Bon Iver and TU Dance at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's Hunter Center.

Here's what we know about the two sold-out shows, which are still a work-in-progress and have yet to be shown publicly: Frontman Justin Vernon is writing the new music, and TU Dance co-founder Uri Sands is choreographing. Kate Nordstrum, who is producing the collaboration for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music Series, also revealed that Bon Iver will appear as four or five members; that the musicians and the dancers will be onstage together throughout the work; and that a visual art component will be part of the show.

"It's very hopeful," Nordstrum said of the performance's nature on Wednesday during a telephone interview, adding that the piece is relevant to the current "cultural moment."

Nordstrum was set to visit the groups at April Base Studios near Eau Claire, Wisc., Vernon's primary recording space, this past week. The groups have worked on the project during multiple residencies and in virtual environments since the fall. They will spend a week in residence at Mass MoCA before the shows at the North Adams institution, arriving on Sunday. The work's final version will debut April 19 at the Palace Theatre in St. Paul, Minn. (The performances that evening and the following three days are sold-out.) They also recently booked an Aug. 5 show at Los Angeles' Hollywood Bowl, an amphitheater with almost 18,000 seats.

Mass MoCA's Hunter Center will be cozier. The museum's residency program allowed it to land a musical act as prominent as Bon Iver, providing the time, space and creative freedom for Vernon and his group to consider the North Adams institution. A typical Bon Iver concert would have been too pricey, according to Mass MoCA Director Joseph Thompson.

"There's no way we could do it," Thompson said in December, after the shows' announcement.

At that time, Nordstrum said this project would be Vernon's first time writing music for dance.

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"He saw this as an exciting opportunity to grow," Nordstrum said.

Vernon has already undergone an expansion, navigating the rare transition from indie folk star to mainstream act. Collaborating with Kanye West and other auto-tune-friendly hip-hop artists has certainly helped facilitate that musical movement. In Bon Iver's last record, "22, a Million," Vernon's falsettos receive plenty of electronic assistance, but the lyrical honesty evoking "For Emma, Forever Ago" isn't overwhelmed.

"Bon Iver's first album in five years takes an unexpected turn toward the strange and experimental. But behind the arranged glitches and processed voices are deeply felt songs about uncertainty," Pitchfork's Amanda Petrusich wrote in a review.

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TU Dance, a 10-member troupe based in St. Paul, brings its own acclaim to the Berkshires. Sands and Toni Pierce-Sands founded the company in 2004. Its dances draw inspiration from classical ballet, modern dance and African-based and urban vernacular movements, according to the group's website. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's Sheila Regan gushed about a TU Dance show last April at St. Paul's Ordway Center for the Performing Arts.

"Between works of spiritually uplifting grandeur and politically charged emotion, intimate demonstrations of highly technical skill and incredible ensemble work, the evening — which included a world premiere and three recent repertory pieces — took the audience for a sweeping ride," Regan wrote.

"Politically charged" describes many of the group's dances. For example, the company performed Stefanie Batten Bland's "41 Times" at St. Paul's The O'Shaughnessy in November. The title is a reference to the number of shots fired by four New York City police officers at Amadou Diallo, who was an unarmed West African immigrant, in 1999. The officers' gunfire killed Diallo. They were later acquitted of all charges. Caroline Palmer of the Twin Cities' Big Dance Town blog attended one of the TU Dance performances.

"It employs a particularly visceral approach — one that began in the lobby prior to the show with audience members volunteering to have their bodies outlined on brown paper," Palmer wrote. "Some of the papers were crumpled up center stage, others were carried in to the theater as if by coffin bearers. And as the lights faded into black, the dancers punched at the papers stretched between them. It sounded like gun shots."

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Whether the dancers' shows with Bon Iver next weekend will be that pointed is a mystery, for now.

Benjamin Cassidy can be reached at bcassidy@berkshireeagle.com, at @bybencassidy on Twitter and 413-496-6251.

In town

Who: Bon Iver and TU Dance

When: Saturday, March 24 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, March 25 at 2 p.m.

Where: Hunter Center, Mass MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams

Tickets: Both shows are sold-out.