Lionel Popkin

Playing off a comically overlarge plush elephant costume, worn in pieces or whole, this vividly imagined, adroitly executed quartet from Los Angeles dance artist Lionel Popkin looks at how an individual body can hold multiple histories and align itself with divergent cultural identities. By turns funny, uncanny and disquieting, There is An Elephant abounds with choreographic eloquence, clever direction and thematic layering: It organically elicits a set of meanings both obvious and unspoken, from the pachyderm in religious iconography to expressions of interior personal space. Popkin, an alumnus of Trisha Brown Dance Company, is joined on stage by Carolyn Hall, Ishmael Houston-Jones and Peggy Piacenza. With an original score by Robert Een.