A few weeks ago I went to a work-in-progress open rehearsal for John Jasperse’s Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, which will have its NYC premier at the Joyce Theater from June 16-19. An evening-length work with a commissioned score by composer Hahn Rowe, Truth features live accompaniment by Rowe and musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble, the 2010 winners of American Music Center’s 2010 Trailblazer Award.

Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, is a new work for five performers choreographed by John Jasperse. In this piece, Jasperse, acclaimed for his clever, intellectually rewarding work, explores the often fluid boundaries between fantasy and reality by juxtaposing varied styles of dance, performance and music in a collage that bounces between the sincere and the ironic. The piece strives to make diverse references to the history of performance practices, where illusion has been alternately cultivated, in the service of creating theatrical magic. The intended result is a bit like a series of balloons which are inflated and either burst or deflate in surprising ways, over and over. Images of the baroque, refinement, seduction, valiance and violence, emerge and disappear; in the end, it is left for audiences to decide what is real and what is a ruse, what is solid and what is full of hot air. Truth premiered in 2009 at the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden, Germany. Here is as promo video for the piece when it showed at MCA in Chicago: