<h2>Three Acts Two Dancers, One Radio Host is a modern dance show staring Ira Glass and Monica Bill Barnes in New York with batons, bubbles, disco balls, tinsel and public-radio personalities.</h2>Things not usually found in a modern dance show in New York: batons, bubbles, disco balls, tinsel and public-radio personalities. But those and other sparkly accouterments were on hand recently in a Brooklyn studio where the dancers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, in Rat Pack-style suits one minute and slinky sequin gowns with sneakers the next, rehearsed for the New York premiere of their show “Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host,” at Town Hall, Sept. 10 to 12. And in the role of the radio host is Ira Glass, of “This American Life,” the popular hybrid of storytelling and journalism that has been a longtime staple of public radio. When Mr. Glass arrived for the run-through, he was informed that the finale would include a lot of confetti, to which he responded, “I welcome that.”
This unlikely collaboration is consistent with the untraditional path Ms. Barnes has taken as a choreographer and director over the past 15 years. “I don’t feel like I’ve ever been a perfect fit in the dance world,” she said recently at a Chelsea cafe. “I want to make something that’s hard to define, that blends things that aren’t usually blended.” And, in the process, “I do want to reach an audience outside of a typical dance audience. “She has done so with a singular style that is equal parts theater, movement, comedy, vaudeville, clowning and spectacle. Think of Buster Keaton in Vegas. It’s also unapologetically human and refreshingly relatable, which is what captured Mr. Glass’s attention.
The two met in a peculiar reversal of roles at a bar in 2011 at a competition modeled after “Dancing With the Stars.” She was speaking a lot, as a judge, and he was dancing, as a contestant. A few months later, he attended a performance of Monica Bill Barnes and Company. “I had never seen anything like it,” Mr. Glass said in a recent phone interview. “And I had never had this experience at a dance show.” A self-described “low-level occasional dancegoing member of the public,” he identified a shared DNA between Ms. Barnes’s work and his show: an unabashed desire to entertain paired with a drive to document the genuine feelings and awkward moments of life. He wrote her a note saying as much, which led to mini-projects, like a guest spot on one of the occasional live broadcasts of “This American Life.” Radio listeners kept asking about the dancers, so eventually he proposed joining them on tour and conducting a post-show interview. Ms. Barnes had a different idea. “She said, ‘I think we should put more of you in the show,’Â ” Mr. Glass recalled. “And she came up with Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host where we would combine dance and radio stories in an integrated way.” The result, first trotted out in miniature form at Carnegie Hall in 2013, has been morphing and popping up sporadically in cities across the country for the past year – what Ms. Barnes called its “preview period.”
The Town Hall version of Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host has been chiseled down to a tight 90 minutes, which is lean considering that the entire archive of Mr. Glass’s radio stories and 11 years of steps and stumbles generated by Ms. Barnes and Ms. Bass were initially fair game as show material. It could have turned into something of a greatest-hits collection. Instead, like a classic “This American Life” segment, it took an unexpected detour, much to the participants’ surprise. “When we really found the heart of the show was when we started to understand that it’s essential that the show at some point take a turn toward being personal,” Ms. Barnes said. “It’s a self-reflective show. It doesn’t shy away from us revealing real parts of ourselves and not the real pretty parts. “Naturally, Mr. Glass is the right man for inviting those kinds of confessions with his ability to pose piercing questions in casual, almost innocent, ways.
In two poignant moments in the show, excerpts from interviews that Mr. Glass conducted with his co-stars provide the soundtrack to their dancing, imbuing otherwise neutral movement with layers of melancholy and the suggestion of mortality. To the soft-spoken Ms. Bass, he asks what it’s like to dance beside a presence as dominating as Ms. Barnes; to Ms. Barnes, who is 41, he forces her to grapple with age and the longevity of a dance career. It’s a comfortable position for Mr. Glass – asking the questions. But to be a full participant in this show, he realized that he would have to share part of himself as well, something he has always resisted on “This American Life. “What I say is so much more personal than the way I talk on the radio, and that’s such an amazing experience to have,” he said. “It’s something that I would never do in any other context. I was surprised by how good it felt to be onstage and speak so personally.” Of course, it’s a show grounded in movement, and Mr. Glass doesn’t just talk. But the players remain coy as to how he participates choreographically, because it’s part of the show’s arc. To say more would be a spoiler. The Glass association, for a small company that has long been operating on the fringe of the dance world, has catapulted Ms. Barnes, Ms. Bass and their team of designers and managers into a new realm of visibility. With scheduled tour dates through the end of 2015, and with the fees that Mr. Glass commands and shares, it has also given them a financial stability they haven’t had before. In a departure for Ms. Barnes, “Three Acts” is self-produced, and that freedom is inspiring an organizational shift from a traditional dance nonprofit to a production company, complete with all the creative control – and all the financial risk. (It’s a leap Mr. Glass knows well, having recently taken “This American Life” independent after 17 years of distribution by Public Radio International.)”The growth has been incredible,” Ms. Bass said. “We’ve expanded in so many ways as a business, too. It’s been an amazing year figuring out what type of company we want to be.”
The growth has bred an appetite for bolder projects: an Off Broadway show is in the works, yet another departure from the conventions of contemporary dance. But the most significant aspect of the Glass collaboration for Ms. Barnes is the opportunity to put her work in front of so many people, hear them laugh, and find that it does connect with a general audience, as she had always hoped. “To have the work resonate in that environment has given me an incredible clarity about our path forward,” she said. “It’s affirming.” Source linkÂ