Against the urgent, experimental laptop music of Holly Herndon, Annie-B Parson’s Big Dance Theater explores a story of five sisters in 1980, gathered in their childhood Los Angeles home. A mix of theater, dance, and spoken opera, the mythic, piercing Mood Room is set during early Reaganism, when Americans were urged to spend and shop rather than actively participate in civic society. In the physical and metaphorical mood room, the all-female cast dives into a deep self-indulgent bubble, retreating from their responsibilities as participants in the larger world. Referencing multiple texts, including Chekhov’s Three Sisters and soap operas, The Mood Room is a mirror for being and nothingness, angst and regret, class and navel-gazing.

Brooklyn-based choreographer Annie-B Parson is artistic director of the Obie/Bessie award-winning Big Dance Theater (BDT), co-founded with Molly Hickok and Paul Lazar in 1991. Her most recent work with David Byrne, Broadway’s Tony-winning American Utopia—maybe “the best live show of all time”, per NME—premiered in 2019, toured the world, and was a film directed by Spike Lee. BDT returns to BAM after creating more than 20 large-scale works for The Japan Society, The Old Vic/London, The National Theater in Paris, and beyond. Along with Byrne, Parson has worked with artists including David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Anne Carson, Ivo van Hove, Laurie Anderson, Suzann Lori Parks, Rodrigo and Gabriella, and Salt-N-Pepa. The author of two books on choreography and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Olivier nomination, and the inaugural Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, she has two large-scale works in the repertory of the Martha Graham Dance Company.