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The Arts Intel Report

Moving Eastman

Elaine Mitchener in Moving Eastman.

Apr 3–4, 2025
Silk St, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS, UK

Loose, funny, extravagant, tuneful, and aleatory without ever feeling random, the late Julius Eastman’s work has finally caught on in the dance world after enjoying a resurgence in new music—of recordings, festivals, an autobiography—for the last decade. This gay, Black composer courted trouble. In 1975, he disturbed the otherwise sanguine John Cage with a homoerotic rendition of one of the eminence grise’s songs, and his composition titles aren’t polite, either. (Here are four, composed within a year of each other: Nigger Faggot, Dirty Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerilla). Today the provocations are part of the appeal. Still, it seems to be less Eastman’s “marginalization” (as the press release puts it) or his “intersectional”—not to mention short and disappointed—life that motivates choreographer-director Dam Van Huynh’s Moving Eastman than a desire to embody the music in rattled human form. Backed by a three-piece London jazz ensemble pointedly not playing Eastman, British Afro-Caribbean singer-dancer Elaine Mitchener doesn’t dance to the music but as it: a possession, an Eastman. —Apollinaire Scherr

Photo: © Barbican