Building on the success of Cedar Lake’s dance “installations,” artistic director Benoit-Swan Pouffer has commisioned choreographer Jill Johnson to create The Copier. This latest project will be the fourth installment in the company’s ever-evolving interactive dance projects. Representing a new approach to dance performance, the less formal setting encourages the audience to participate: follow the dancers, change vantage points. The performances are more akin to a walk through an art gallery than a traditional dance performance, where the audience would usually be sitting in rowed seats, watching from below.

Jill Johnson, a protégé of William Forsythe, takes the inspiration for The Copier quite literally. The flare of a copy machine’s light sweeps like a lighthouse beacon over the floors and walls of Cedar Lake’s spacious warehouse like performance space. Music begins and ends with the rhythm of a cantankerous computer printer and other natural and synthetic sounds captured from the city: subways and traffic, ring tones and paper shredders, bird songs, barking dogs, and the murmur of overheard conversations punctuate composer David Poe’s otherwise orchestral score.

“You might say that The Copier is an analog response to a digital world,” says Johnson, former Ballet Frankfurt dancer. “Part of what we’re trying to illustrate is the impact of our culture of repetition and routine, and what happens when we break from it.”


The Copier: Concept from Caleb Custer on Vimeo.

“Before digital technology became ubiquitous, even mechanical copies of the same material were slightly different — there was a degradation when you xeroxed a xeroxed document or recorded a vinyl record onto a cassette,” says Johnson. “Now that we can create perfect duplicates of photographs, music, even livestock, do we put a greater value on things that are organic and made by hand, or do we prefer the perfection of a seamless copy?”

“By choice, force, or design, we copy others everyday,” the choreographer opines. “We stand in lines, forward email, repeat overheard slang and opinions, and follow trends. Most of us wake up for work and follow a routine, copying the movements we made the day before, which are often the same movements made by others. We’re all copiers.”

“But of course, we are all individuals and, as such, are inherently different from each other, even when we do the same things. Just as an identical outfit will look different when worn by two people, the same movement appears different when performed by different dancers, even when they are perfectly synchronized.”

Cedar Lake is in the heart of the Chelsea Gallery District in Manhattan.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the Cedar Lake website.

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