Arrive (2008)

Choreography Jennifer Backhaus Music Mogwai & Explosions In The Sky Number of Dancers 8 Premiere The Irvine Barclay Theatre, Irvine, CA

Arrive was commissioned in part by the McCallum Theatre Institute in November 2007. The following quote by poet laureate Maya Angelou was the inspiration for creating the piece.

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to
arrive at its destination full of hope."

“ ...’Arrive,’ was commissioned by the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert last fall [2007]. Backhaus got a specific assignment: Create a piece based on lines written by award-winning author and poet Maya Angelou.
Backhaus admitted – with some hesitation, because she is generally upbeat – that the love poem was too saccharine for her. She approached the work conceptually to solve the dilemma.
‘I just had this quote, so what we did is we dissected it,’ she explained. ‘We created a movement alphabet. The dancers helped to create a lot of the movement. I made them spell out the quote. We built solos for them based on the words. And so it was very abstract.’”
-Laura Bleiberg, OC Register

Reviews
“And Jennifer Backhaus' fluid octet "Arrive" (performed to Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky) simply reiterated what the local dance community already knew about her sophistication and refinement...”
- Lewis Segal, LA Times