To open BAM’s $50 million Richard B. Fisher Building, rising choreographer Jonah Bokaer (right) and artist Anthony McCall collaborated on “Eclipse,” featuring five dancers, 36 dangling light bulbs and Bokaer dancing the first and last solos. (Zandy Mangold)
Brooklyn’s newest performance space — the $50 million BAM Richard B. Fisher building, with 250 seats that can change configurations — is being opened by an artist just as versatile.
That’s Jonah Bokaer, the 30-year-old choreographer who thinks outside the “black box.” Last night he transformed the space into a glowing landscape with “Eclipse.” As BAM’s executive producer Joseph V. Melillo puts it, “This is the artist who shows why the BAM Fisher should exist.”
Born in Ithaca, NY, the dark-eyed and driven Bokaer (pronounced Beau-KARE) comes from a family of artists — a filmmaker father with a Tunisian background, and a mother with Welsh roots who directed theater.
At 18, he became the youngest member ever to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Just two years later — while dancing full time — he still managed to found Chez Bushwick, a building near his own Brooklyn digs that offers low-cost rehearsal and performance space to artists.
Bokaer’s dancing, powered by his supple, arched feet and fluid line, made him a rising star. All this led to working with avant-garde director Robert Wilson and more of his own projects. Two years ago, Bokaer created “Anchises,” a beautiful and restrained riff on the myth of Troy, where its destruction was evoked by the collapse of large foam cylinders. (You can catch it, and more of his work, on YouTube).
“Eclipse,” Bokaer’s 30th work, wouldn’t be possible without British artist Anthony McCall, who created an environment featuring a tilted grid of 36 hanging bulbs. Only then did Bokaer make his moves — some for himself, the rest for four dancers who tumble and navigate in intricate pathways around the bulbs. They softly glow on and off in their own carefully timed dance.
“Jonah’s way of collaborating is utterly unique,” McCall explains. “He takes his collaborator’s ideas whole and then builds on them. Some choreographers begin with a piece of music. Jonah begins with a complete visual idea from his collaborators. It’s like a relay — he takes the baton and runs with it.”
Bokaer spent the summer working on several projects at once. Ticking off his schedule, it adds up to 19-hour days. If he has a private life — and if he does, he won’t discuss it — it’s hard to know how he fits it in.
“I don’t sleep a lot,” he once told an interviewer. “But the gift is to keep working.”
That includes making his own solos, which open and close the work. As of late last week, Bokaer was still putting the finishing touches on them.
“I have to sign the piece,” he says, smiling enigmatically, before getting back to business.
“Eclipse” runs through Sunday at the BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn. For tickets and information, call 718-636-4100 or visit bam.org.