Director & Choreographer
John Heginbotham

Composer
Colin Jacobsen

Sound Design
Omar Zubair

Costume Design
Maile Okamura

Creative Consultant
Andrea Weber

Performers
5 dancers, 1 actor

Run Time
60 minutes

UPCOMING EVENTS

Creative Residency
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH
May 5-10, 2024

Governors Island
New York, NY
June 2-9, 2024

World Premiere
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn, NY
August 1-3, 2024

Photos: Whitney Browne

Dance Heginbotham’s You Look Like a Fun Guy is an outdoor performance event inspired by John Cage’s interest in mycology and his methods of composing music. Broadcasting and heightening the natural sonic environment live, Omar Zubair's audio installation plays with the audience’s perception of reality and is paired with original music composed by Colin Jacobson, with costumes by Maile Okamura. Directed and choreographed by John Heginbotham, You Look Like a Fun Guy celebrates Cage's rigorous and playful concerns as well as the astonishing nature and behavior of fungi. Shaped and informed by its surroundings, this unique performance event responds to the natural environment it inhabits.

“Fun Guy is in bolder and subtler ways about connection. Sometimes, it's about resurrection or about the reorganization of living, dynamic elements. Mushrooms, among their abilities, can eat death as well as create or facilitate life. In the spirit of connecting with those nearby and far away, Fun Guy is sometimes a conversation with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, imagining their ways of allowing nature into their close artistic work together. Longtime dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Andrea Weber joins us as a Fun Guy cast and creative team member. She represents this beautiful lineage - this connection - which, as far as I can tell, was full of serious focus and playfulness. The dream for Fun Guy is that it offers direct experiences for all of our senses. The part of fungi we most often see - the mushroom, the flowering body - is starting to glow. I can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been creating.” - John Heginbotham

You Look Like a Fun Guy has been developed in creative residencies at White Oak, supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; The Ringling Museum; Dartmouth College; Governors Island; and Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center. Colin Jacobsen’s score for You Look Like a Fun Guy was commissioned with support from the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation.