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Sarah A. O. Rosner, left, and Rowan Magee in rehearsal at BARN in Queens.

Sarah A. O. Rosner’s press contact dropped me a line shortly before I headed to New York last week, wondering if I’d be interested in stopping by a rehearsal. The A. O. Movement Collective’s latest, 90 Ways to Wake from Drowning, premieres at Joyce SoHo this weekend, Friday 30 and Saturday 31. Tickets are moving fast — a Saturday matinée was added to absorb some demand.

I encourage you folks out there to catch this work.

Granted, I didn’t see much at BARN — just an hour or so of tweaks to two duets between Rowan Magee and Ilona Bito — but I enjoyed watching Rosner observe and offer notes on the material. Even when tuning highly physical vocabulary (Bito spent a lot of time upside down), Rosner uses language more like a theater director’s to coax out the environment she’s looking for. It showed in the way the pair’s slow wrestle seemed more like an impassioned discussion in movement than a pas de deux. Rosner’s work isn’t about using dance to represent life; you instead feel like you’re observing interactions within a community that speaks through bodily contact. This strikes a chord of authenticity in solid dialogue with how dance as an art form works, and anchors the more angst-ridden moments, which could become indulgent, to real emotional bedrock.

More on 90 Ways by Brian McCormick at Gay City News.

More on the AOMC at its affiliate blog The Urgent Artist.

Their preview video is after the break.