[...] the company returns this weekend to Cal Performances in Berkeley with the Bay Area premiere of Deborah Hay’s contemplative “Figure at Sea,” set to music by Laurie Anderson.
Hay stepped out of her choreographic comfort zone for “Figure at Sea” by using, among other methods, computer algorithms and animation models for the work.
The Anderson music allows the dancers to improvise, so no two performances are the same.
A Swedish critic called “Figure at Sea” “60 minutes of purity, beauty, and body, done with the total conviction that everything complicated can be said without any words” and “a remarkable and sublime meditative experience.”