Facing Front: Cheap Lecture & The Cow Piece

thirdbird presents Facing Front: The Duets of Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion

Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece. “A chaotic meditation upon dance, music and mortality. It is a form of making that continues in the practice of performing.”

About Facing Front
Facing Front was the first complete retrospective of the duets of choreographer Jonathan Burrows and composer Matteo Fargion, presented over two weekends, June 19–27, 2015, at the Neighborhood House Theater. Describing what they do as “handmade and human-scale,” Burrows and Fargion have built a body of duets that mix the formality of classical music composition with an open and often anarchic approach to performance and audiences. Their complex frameworks combine non-spectacular elements to arrive at a deceptive virtuosity, run through with humor and wit: beguiling work made of movement, text and sound.

Major support for Facing Front was provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

Thirdbird was the collaborative wing of the shared endeavors of Anna Drozdowski (proprietor of Ladybird) and Dustin Hurt (founder of Bowerbird). First hatched for the Blindspot festival in 2011, it served as a way to share dance, music and performance art.