Trajal Harrell’s dance piece “Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (S)” is being performed at the New Museum in New York today and tomorrow. Harrell’s five dances are set to the music of my composition for two artificial neural networks “For Alan Turing”

“What would have happened in 1963 if someone from the voguing ball scene in Harlem had come downtown to perform alongside the early postmoderns at Judson Church?”

Rather than illustrate a historical fiction, Harrell’s new work transplants this proposition into a contemporary context and debate about the seduction of the audience and the naiveté of the performer, and/or vice-versa. The (S) version, co-presented by the New Museum and Danspace Project in association with Crossing the Line 2009, is a solo performance by Trajal Harrell featuring work by visual artist Franklin Evans.