‘Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion have created a performance that dances in your head. It's superb.' De Morgen, Belgium
The work of Burrows and Fargion radiates delight even as it makes the audience think. Over the past ten years they have built a body of duets which mix the formality of classical music composition with an open and often anarchic approach to performance and audiences, bringing them a worldwide following.
In Cheap Lecture the two men steal the shape of John Cage's Lecture On Nothing to make an impassioned and increasingly unhinged explanation of their work.
It's followed by The Cow Piece, which restages the lecture as a riotous celebration of the limits of logic, where two tables become the staging ground for twelve plastic cows who dance, sing, speak, think, sleep, go, come and die in a series of ritual executions which have delighted and disconcerted audiences around the world.
Few practitioners have had the influence on contemporary dance that Burrows and Fargion have had. Their work is witty, thoughtful and wonderfully absorbing.
‘There are few performers who can hold an audience captive like this double act… the timing of every note, shrug, laugh and gesture is awesome.’ *****
The Guardian
'...occasionally feeling gloomy during some performance or other, I’ve wished that a fed-up theater goblin would whisk away the show I’m watching and deposit Burrows and Fargion in its place.’
Deborah Jowitt, DanceBeat
‘How do they notate such complex interlockings of gesture, sound, word, props and movement… How long does it take them to create this diabolical puzzle? Never mind - just please go and see this… It could be years before they’re back.’
The Arts Desk
Conceived and performed by Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion
Cheap Lecture was commissioned by Cultureel Centrum Maasmechelen and Dans in Limburg. The Cow Piece was supported by public funding through the Flemish Ministry and Kaaitheater Brussels.
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion are co-produced by Kaaitheater Brussels, PACT Zollverein Essen, Sadler's Wells Theatre London and BIT Teatergarasjen Bergen.
The two men are currently in-house artists at the Nightingale, Brighton.
