Paul Lazar: Cage Shuffle

Paul Lazar’s Cage Shuffle is a 50-minute dance/theater solo. In Cage Shuffle Paul Lazar speaks a series of one-minute stories by John Cage from his 1963 score Indeterminacy, while simultaneously performing a complex choreographic score by Annie-B Parson (who co-founded Big Dance Theatre along with Lazar). The stories are spoken in random order with no predetermined relationship to the dancing, yet chance serves up its inevitable and uncanny connection between text and movement. Cage’s humor, intellect and iconoclasm find ideal expression in this new work which adds dance to Cage’s original performance instructions: Read stories aloud, paced so that each story takes one minute, using chance procedures or not.

Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has directed, co-directed, and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company, and Japan Society. In 2017 Paul premiered a solo piece called Cage Shuffle at the American Realness Festival in New York. He has subsequently toured Cage Shuffle throughout the United States and Europe.

Cage Shuffle excerpted from Big Dance Theater on Vimeo.