Now in its 15th year, Performa is a Chelsea institution whose object has been to summon and unify the artistic disciplines through live performance. In honor of the th anniversary of Bauhaus, the Performa 19 Biennial takes up the principles, kindred to its own, of the German design school.
Bauhaus flourished between the wars in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin. It laid down as its founding proposition a union under one roof of art and industry, of form and function.
Behind its walls the disciplines commingled. Later, Baghramian added to the installation her personal collection of erotic Polaroid photographs by the Italian architect, Carlo Mollino. With the addition of choreographer and dancer Maria Hassabi, a fourth character joins the affair.
The installation performance brims with contrasts. Bauhaus rescued artful design from the exclusive demesne of the wealthy with mass manufacture. Audience members wait in the entrance of the townhouse now run as cultural space by the nonprofit before filing in to a back room. The harsh fluorescent light overhead cancels what warm tones would have been offered by the ornate, wood molding. At moments, the light flashes on and off, disorienting the viewers and strobing the movement sequences.
The dancers unfurl their spiraled bodies and exit through the doorway, by ones and twos, until the last one leaves her dancing trance and is swallowed up by the crowd.
