Passing Strange‘s Annie Dorsen to Debut Pièce Sans Paroles and Magical in Europe

Obie Award-winning director/writer Annie Dorsen will debut two pieces created in collaboration with choreographer Anne Juren this spring.

The duo’s Pièce Sans Paroles will debut at Brut in Vienna on May 8 and then be performed at both Rencontres Choréographiques in Paris; and the Salzburg Festival. The piece will feature Juren along with choreographer DD Dorvillier, who will silently perform Tennessee Williams’ The Two-Character Play, complete with staging, characters, and design.

Dorsen and Juren will also collaborate on Magical — a solo dance piece that uses the frame of a magic show to deal with the possibility for illusion within dance. The piece will debut at Impulstanz Festival in Vienna in July.

In related news, Dorsen’s short film I Miss will be screened as part of the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival in Austin Texas on March 13. The movie is based on the artist’s pop-political performance project Democracy in America, which played PS122 in the Spring of 2008. The film focuses on a girl who is being coaxed by her mother to recite an intensely romantic poem. A new theater piece from Dorsen, Hello Hi There, which will be performed entirely by artificial intelligence computer programs that simulate human conversation, will debut in September at Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria, prior to performances in Oslo, Bergen, Berlin, and at PS122 in New York.

Dorsen is co-creator of the musical Passing Strange, which she also directed. Most recently she directed Ask Your Mama at Carnegie Hall.