You Look Like a Fun Guy
Hop Artist in ResidenceThe life cycle of fungi unfolds through dancing bodies in a wondrous site-specific work.
2024/25 Season
Mushrooms occupy every superlative in the known universe yearbook; they're the biggest, smallest, most resilient, most adaptive, most diverse, deadliest, liveliest, arguably tastiest organism in existence. Heginbotham dancers, and the venue, embody the essence of these astonishing organisms, morphing into new versions of themselves. The mycelial dance is coupled with an environmental score inspired by the pioneering composer John Cage, in a multi-sensorial work that responds to the interconnectedness of nature.
You Look Like A Fun Guy follows the life cycle of fungi: from the delicate emergence of spores and the rhythmic pulsations of mycelial networks to the majestic rise of the mushroom's fruiting body and the graceful dance of decay and renewal.
The work is set on the golf course, and scored with music by Colin Jacobsen and an original audio installation created by Omar Zubair. The forest's ambient sounds are recorded, layered and broadcasted on top of the natural sonic environment to create a singular audio experience. The sounds of trees rustling, twigs snapping, dancers breathing, footsteps falling create a constantly evolving score that twists our perception of reality.
A longtime Hop collaborator, Dance Heginbotham (DH) founder John Heginbotham is the director of the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble and a lecturer in the college's theater department. John was in residence at Dartmouth this spring expanding his work Fun Guy. In 2019, the Hop presented a selection of DH's works in collaboration with music band Alarm Will Sound.
You Look Like a Fun Guy is programmed in conjunction with the Dartmouth Climate Collaborative, an initiative to accelerate campus decarbonization efforts, and part of a series of climate-related experiences, including discussions, dance workshops and mushroom-centered events.
You Look Like a Fun Guy has been developed in creative residencies at White Oak and the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The work is supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; and Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center. Colin Jacobsen's score for You Look Like a Fun Guy was commissioned with support from the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation.
Funded in part by the Mifflin Family Fund for Dance, the Carolyn R. Kohn 1976 Dance Artist in Residence Fund, Melville 1960 and Leila Straus and Robert S. Weil 1940 Fund in Support of Hopkins Center Visiting Performing Artist Program.
Photo: Whitney Browne
Chairs will be provided, but feel free to bring your own blanket for sitting on the lawn. This event is weather-dependent. Please check this page for updates on the day of each performance.
Dance Heginbotham (DH)
is a New York-based contemporary dance company committed to supporting, producing and performing the work of choreographer John Heginbotham. With an emphasis on collaboration, DH enriches national and international communities with its unique blend of inventive, thoughtful and rigorous dance theater works.
Founded in 2011, DH established itself as one of the most adventurous and exciting new companies on the contemporary dance scene, and is celebrated for its vibrant athleticism, humor, and theatricality, as well as its commitment to collaboration.
DH has shared the stage with luminaries of the music world including Alarm Will Sound, Brooklyn Rider, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, The Knights, National Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Bell, André de Ridder, Christoph Eschenbach, Gabriel Kahane, Eric Jacobsen, Nathan Koci and Shara Nova, and has commissioned new scores from composers Tyondai Braxton, Ethan Iverson, and Colin Jacobsen. DH has collaborated with designers and artists Maira Kalman, Isaac Mizrahi, Amy Trompetter, Maile Okamura and Nicole Pearce in the creation of new works. More at www.danceheginbotham.org
John Heginbotham, Choreographer & Artistic Director
Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, John Heginbotham graduated from The Juilliard School in 1993, and was a member of Mark Morris Dance Group (1998-2012). In 2011, he founded Dance Heginbotham. John received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2014 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. Other awards and fellowships include World Choreography Awards Nomination (The Umbrella Academy), Research Fellow at the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron-NCCAkron (2018-2020), New York City Center Choreography Fellowship (2017/18 ), Fellow at NYU's Center for Ballet and the Arts (2016) and Jerome Robbins Foundation New Essential Works (NEW) Fellowship (2010, 2012). Sought after as a freelance choreographer, John's independent projects include the Tony and Olivier Awards-winning revival of Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish (Bard Summerscape, 2015; St.Ann's Warehouse, 2018; Broadway, 2019; National Tour, 2021/22; Young Vic London, 2022, West End 2023); "Meet The Family", Season 3, Episode 1 of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix; RACECAR for The Washington Ballet (2019); and John Adams' Girls of the Golden West, directed by Peter Sellars (San Francisco Opera, 2017; Dutch National Opera, 2019). John is the Director of the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble and is a founding teacher of Dance for PD®, an ongoing collaboration between the Mark Morris Dance Group and the Brooklyn Parkinson Group.
Resources
Download Playbill “…simply, beautiful, in its beautiful simplicity.”
The Boston Globe
“...buoyantly musical, courteous with hints of mischief...”
The New York Times
Fun Guy in the News
Dance, Climate, and Fungi at Dartmouth
Resident artist John Heginbotham and the Hop collaborate on environmental humanities.
An Outdoor Dance Work Draws on John Cage's Fascination With Mushrooms
Staged at dusk at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the new work by the choreographer John Heginbotham features a quartet of dancers cycling through gestures influenced by mushroom biology (hands...
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