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A short video work memorializing missed endings, absent applause, and canceled performances, as well as a belated farewell to one dancer’s onstage career

Watch the commission and conversation

Madeline Hollander’s 52 Final Bows premiered on September 14, 2021. Watch it below.

David Hallberg joined Madeline Hollander for a live conversation on Zoom on October 12, 2021.

About this commission

In Madeline Hollander’s video, 52 Final Bows, the artist collaborates with former American Ballet Theatre principal dancer David Hallberg to spotlight 52 iconic bows and their unique, albeit subtle choreographies. The piece features bows from roles Hallberg has performed throughout his career, as well as signature bows associated with various choreographers, dance styles, schools, and instructors. The work serves both as a collective requiem for all of the missed endings, absent applause, and canceled performances over the past year due to the pandemic as well as an official closing to Hallberg’s onstage career, as he was unable to perform his farewell role in Giselle that had been scheduled for 2020.

Hollander joined the Shed family of artists as a member of the first cohort of Open Call participants. When her 2020 performance was delayed due to the pandemic, she re-envisioned a version of her commission for a virtual audience.

52 Bows is commissioned by The Shed with the support of Performa.

Conversation Participants

Portrait of Madeline Hollander
Madeline Hollander
The dancer David Hallberg standing with arms crossed in a black tshirt and pants against a white background
Courtesy David Hallberg.
David Hallberg
Madeline Hollander
Artist
Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles) is an artist who works with performance, video, and installation to explore how human movement and body language negotiate their limits within everyday systems of technology, intellectual property law, and daily ritual. Her work presents continuously looping events that intervene within spatial, psychological, and temporal landscapes and engage with alternate modes of viewership, replication, and archiving. Hollander earned a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2021); the Visual Arts Center, University of Austin, Texas (2021); Bortolami, NY (2020); the Artist’s Institute, NY (2018); Bosse & Baum, UK (2017); and SIGNAL, Brooklyn, NY (2016). Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial (2019); the Aldrich Museum, CT (2020); Helsinki Contemporary, Finland (2019); Serpentine Galleries, UK (2018); the Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2019); and the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2017). Upcoming projects include the Performa Biennial 2021 in NYC and ARCH Athens, Greece, 2022.
David Hallberg

David Hallberg was a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and the Bolshoi Ballet, a principal guest artist with the Royal Ballet, and resident guest artist with the Australian Ballet. He is the author of a critically acclaimed memoir, A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back. He made history in 2011 when he became the first American to join the Bolshoi Ballet under the title premier dancer.

Hallberg danced every major full-length classical ballet, along with works by the major choreographers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He performed as a guest artist with the Mariinsky Ballet, the Paris Opéra Ballet, Teatro alla Scala, the Tokyo Ballet, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Kiev Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Bayreische Staatsoper Ballet, Opera di Roma, and Georgian State Ballet among others.

In November 2011, Hallberg performed The Sleeping Beauty, the first ballet performance to reopen the newly renovated Bolshoi Theatre, which was broadcast through cinemas to 60 countries around the world. He won the prestigious Benois de la Danse Prize for Best Male Dancer in 2010, for his performance as Albrecht in Giselle with American Ballet Theatre. He established the David Hallberg Scholarship to mentor aspiring male dancers at American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company and Ballet Arizona. He has also created and directs ABT INCUBATOR, a workshop encouraging creation by emerging choreographers.

In 2021, David Hallberg became the eighth artistic director of the Australian Ballet.

Production Credits

Directed by Madeline Hollander
Featuring David Hallberg, Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet and former American Ballet Theatre principal dancer

Jack Pearce, Videographer
Sasha Okshteyn, Producer
Madeline Hollander, Editor

In The Works

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The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund and the Shed Commissioners.