The 92nd Street Y, New York, presents Bridgman | Packer Dance’s Ghost Factory, in its New York City premiere. Performances are on November 20 and 21 at 7 pm in Buttenwieser Hall at the Arnold Center, with tickets available at https://www.92ny.org/event/bridgman-packer-dance.

For more than 40 years, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have made work unlike anyone else: just the two of them onstage, merging dance and film into a singular, ever-evolving language. Today, their boundary-blurring dances remain as inventive as ever.

In Ghost Factory, their latest work, live performance and video collide in a world of shifting perspectives and haunted spaces. Inspired by the abandoned factories and residents of Johnson City, New York, the piece conjures a landscape where human stories cling to architecture, and images flicker with the presence of those who came before. Dancers move through and against projected environments that fracture, multiply, and dissolve, creating a mesmerizing interplay of illusion and physicality.

What lingers in a space after we leave,
and what happens when those traces begin to move?

Created with longtime collaborators including filmmaker Peter Bobrow, lighting designer Frank DenDanto III, costume designer Anna-Alisa Belous, and composer/sound designer Ansel Bobrow, Ghost Factory unfolds as a fully immersive experience.

Extending into and through 92NY’s Harkness Dance Center, is Places with Hidden Stories, an accompanying audiovisual installation that brings into vivid focus stories from residents of Johnson City, NY who inspired Ghost Factory. This installation also includes factory stories from places around the country where Ghost Factory has been performed and a NYC hidden story of the Lower East Side tenement apartment where Myrna’s father was born during the time when her grandfather worked in the fur factories. 

Part of 92NY’s Home season, Bridgman | Packer Dance takes on 92NY’s newly renovated home, transforming it into a living, shifting environment that holds memory, illusion, and human presence all at once.

Places With Hidden Stories will be open for viewing an hour before and after the performance of Ghost Factory.