Tonight the clock is running… and so are they! Longtime performing partners Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass will leave it all on the field in this world premiere production. It’s got just as much heart (and potential for failure!) as last year’s World Series, except there are no balls, no bats, and it’s only 63 minutes long. Everyday movements will be taken to monumental new heights as Barnes and Bass summon a night of unexpected joy from manic finger snapping, competitive spinning, and non-stop athleticism. Don’t be fooled by the title, One Night Only happens seven times a week and they’ll be making up the rules as they go.

Following The Museum Workout, which led audience members on a choreographed workout routine in the hallowed halls of The Met and became the hottest ticket in town – Monica Bill Barnes & Company now joins forces with WP Theater in association with New Neighborhood for One Night Only (running as long as we can). Known for bringing dance where it doesn’t belong, this company makes its Off-Broadway debut with this hilarious and heartbreaking new show celebrating the ephemeral nature of everything, including our own abilities.

Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass are the most fun choreographers ever. They may also be the most fun people ever, but I haven’t met everyone so who can say. What you may miss at their new production at the Women’s Project, One Night Only (running as long as we can), is that they are a profoundly conceptual, endlessly sensitive, and frighteningly interesting company as well. One Night Only is a dance performance not about the dancing itself, but about these dancers as athletes at a certain point in their careers (hopefully not the end), and performance frame of a dance performance itself. They have choreographed a conceptual dance piece, theoretically more concerned with their ideas then the actual movements — but the concept is so personal and elegant, so grounded in their bodies and what moving has done to their bodies, and so invested in dancing and not just ideas about dancing, well, it’s the best kind of concept art, is what I’m trying to say. One Night Only is framed as some amalgamated sporting event. Veteran technical director Robert Saenz de Viteri is the broadcaster for the evening, sitting in a visible “announcing booth” in the house. He calls the show, so as Barnes and …Read more