Giant Empty (2001)

(75 minutes)
Choreography: John Jasperse
in collaboration with Miguel Gutierrez, Parker Lutz, and Juliette Mapp
Set Design: Matthias Bringmann
Lighting Design: Stan Pressner
Sound Design and Mix: Michael Floyd


Giant Empty is an evening-length piece for four dancers. The work deals with division--between inside and outside; self and other; intimacy and distance; future, present and past. We as humans are continuously constructing new divisions while reaffirming or dismantling existing ones, imposing spatial, temporal and ideological structures onto our world. We use these divisions to separate out (and thereupon assign meaning to) individual people, groups, moments and places from the enormous continuity of humanity, time and space. While these divisions are highly subjective and often unstable, we depend on them to define such fundamental aspects of our existence as personal identity. Giant Empty is about the continuous flux of where we place our "edges" and how we use those frames to define ourselves and our experiences. When these boundaries momentarily collapse, there is an ensuing sense of vastness--a "giant empty." The work also deals with this experience and the myriad of emotions which can accompany it.

Within this frame, the piece explores the idea of actions which take place, not merely in the sense of occurring, but in the sense of seizing a given space and redefining its meaning through the actions which occur within in. Implicit in this is the idea that architecture (in the sense of spatial identity) exists not only through physical matter, but can also be created through physical action. A key part of this is the transformative power of repetitive action.

"The repetitive motion of a line, to caress an object, the licking of wounds, the back and forth of a shuttle, the endless repetition of waves, rocking a person to sleep, cleaning someone you like, an endless gesture of love." - Louise Bourgeois

"Giant Empty" is a co-production of Ballett Frankfurt and The Brooklyn Academy of Music in collaboration with co-commissioning partners the American Dance Festival and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Development of the work was also made possible through the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Philip Morris Companies, Inc. , Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and The British Council. Additional funds for the development of the work were provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation of St. Paul, MN, Creative Capital Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, an Artist’s Fellowship in Choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the James E. Robison Foundation, and The Goethe-Institute.