My Dinner with Andrea:
the piece formerly known as Torture Playlist
Andrea Kleine’s 2017 work began as a dance about the music deployed in the CIA’s torture program. In despair, Kleine abandoned that idea and channeled theater shaman André Gregory from his 1981 film My Dinner with André, creating a new version of the famed dinner conversation as she seeks answers on how to make a dance about torture, or how to make anything at all. The piece emerges as an amalgam of fragments: fractures of complicity, futility, and desire.
“Kleine, who is also a novelist, uses that film’s conversational structure to discuss the challenges of making a dance piece about torture and, in frustration, wonders “how to make anything at all.” With debate about torture once again in daily headlines, and artists asking how to engage in uncharted political waters, those questions resonate."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
a piece by Andrea Kleine
performed by Alison Ingelstrom, Andrea Kleine, Anya Liftig, Bobby Previte, Dan Dobson, Michael Kammers, Neal Kirkwood
original score by Bobby Previte. lighting design by Madeline Best.
commissioned and presented by New York Live Art (premiere: February 2017) with additional support from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Fund, Barnard College Dance Department, and Art of Franza, Inc.
Anya Liftig In Conversation with Andrea Kleine -- Critical Correspondence
