Bigger is better

DANCING QUEEN Bauer takes a solo turn in At Large.

Photograph: Giannina Urmeneta

In her new work, At Large, Eleanor Bauer didn’t settle for just making a dance. She also self-published a book, which begins with a manifesto of sorts: “To be AT LARGE is to be without limits; to ask oneself to step beyond the borders of one’s own personal interests; to encourage one’s artistic practice to spill over the edges of its own tidy definitions.” And then there’s the screen saver, the video installation, the new dance fad (“scratching”) and a very catchy song.…

“Every time I read what I wrote about this piece, I’m like, That could describe anything!” Bauer exclaims in an interview at a Chelsea café. “What are you doing? What is it really? It’s large and it’s all-encompassing. It’s not to get stuck in generalizations, but to let it all be.”

Bauer, who graduated from NYU’s Tisch School in 2003, moved to Brussels a year later to complete a two-year Research Cycle program at the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (PARTS) there. A vivacious artist armed with a curiosity that sends her thoughts careering in many directions at once, she examines the relevance of dance in her new trio, to be performed this weekend at the Chocolate Factory in a copresentation with Dance Theater Workshop.

The work is influenced by “B-Chronicles,” a research project about mobility in the performing arts, for which Bauer conducted 50 interviews with Brussels-based dance professionals. The At Large book, which is available at the show, compiles the answers. “It was interesting to ask ‘Why do people dance?’ ” she recalls. “ ‘Why do they watch it? What is it? And what’s specific about it?’ And a big factor is pleasure. That came up again and again, from high art to low art. Dance is very connected to pleasure, from doing it to the vicarious pleasure of watching it.”

For her choreographic process—At Large is, in part, a performative catalog of dances—Bauer explored social dance fads and spent a great deal of time surfing YouTube. She became particularly entranced with the Soulja Boy craze. “He became a part of our field of references,” Bauer, 25, explains. “He made a dance that’s become like the Macarena or something. It spread so fast and so hard that people were doing it all over the place. What made Soulja Boy’s music so marketable was the dance. I was excited to see that. If you just open your eyes, kids are dancing everywhere and making things up that are actually technical and virtuosic. I discovered so many social dance fads that are really complicated—sophisticated rhythmically or that use some kind of code, like spelling your name with your feet.”

Bauer responded in kind by creating “scratching,” a dance for the studio and the street that anyone can do (visit her website, goodmove.be). “It’s fictional and it’s a joke, but it’s also working in a way,” Bauer says. “The Movement Research Festival wants to make it its Macarena, so that’s really funny. But also it’s been blogged about in France and in Belgium; people have posted it and said, ‘Look at this new dance fad.’ ”

The work also addresses deeper questions, dealing with Bauer’s nomadic life as a dancer and choreographer moving from city to city. She considers Brussels her home base (at least that’s where her books and bed are), but in July she will relocate to Montpellier, France, for a six-month residency. And in January, she will join Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s ensemble Rosas in Brussels.

“I just like Anne Teresa,” Bauer says. “I have always respected her work, and I loved learning her repertory. It uses all your skills. I think she has an interesting grasp on how expressive something super formal can be and it’s the best dance-dance gig I could imagine. And I want to dance.”

But for all her success in Europe, Bauer is still grateful for her one year in New York, where, as she puts it, “you have to fight so hard to make it possible.” Life is different in Brussels: “It’s a luxury to be able to sit in a studio for three hours and be like, Is that really what you think? And that gets to an obnoxious degree in Brussels sometimes. It’s like, Shut up and dance! So there are pitfalls on both sides. That’s why I’m indebted for life—I feel so grateful for my time in New York. I don’t think I’ll ever be ungrateful for being able to dance as my living.”

Eleanor Bauer/Good Move is at the Chocolate Factory through Sat, May 17 .