Brian Brooks Moving Company
“Piñata”
Summerdance Santa Barbara
Center Stage Theater
July 9, 2005
Santa Barbara is a town that knows how to party, so it’s not surprising that Summerdance Santa Barbara executive director Dianne Vapnek imports companies (mostly from New York) that offer equal parts sophistication and fun. Last year, Brooklyn-based Brian Brooks Moving Company brought out “Dance-o-Matic,” a minimalist rhapsody in bubble-gum pink. The group also started creating a new full-evening work, “Piñata,” which received its West Coast debut last weekend during the company’s return to the Center Stage Theater. “Piñata” is a fiesta, to be sure, a suite of rigorous musical structures dressed up in confetti and camp. But in its most striking moments, the silliness becomes just a backdrop for a mesmerizing revelation of order in chaos, like reading an elegant geometric proof rendered on purple construction paper....

Brian Brooks Moving Company: Worth Repeating
Everyday heroes in shining choreographic armor
by Deborah Jowitt
March 18th, 2008 12:00 AM
Brian Brooks Moving Company
Ailey Citigroup Theater
March 12 through 16

If I told you that a man and a woman, shoulder to shoulder, sidestep to the right, hips swaying, to a throaty song by Peaches, walk back to where they began, and start over, adding rhythmic changes and larger gestures with every repeat, you might think: "Boorrriiing!" But if I told you that both members of this poker-faced chorus line are wearing only tiny, ruffled pink panties and pink feather boas and that, at one point, Weena Pauly steps along with Brian Brooks standing on her shoulders, you'd think again...