Barnett Cohen’s ‘anyyywayyy whatever’ Is a Bold Mosaic of Movement and Text

The Brooklyn-based artist and choreographer Barnett Cohen sits cross-legged in the folding chair: tall and tattooed, dressed in their signature all-white street clothes. Despite their almost intimidatingly cool looks, they have an unassuming, gentle presence. When they lean back and say, “Okay, let’s go from the top of movement four,” it’s an invitation, not a command. Six hip yet humble dancers nod and rearrange themselves in the large studio space, take a collective breath and start moving in silence.

At first, the gestures were minimal and recognizable: arms raised in a V, feet tucked behind ankles in coupé. Their sneakers squeaked on the floor as they stepped in and out of clean formations reminiscent of cheerleading routines, bird migrations or both–Cohen’s work is never just one thing. Then someone started speaking, “High octane octaves / intrusive thoughts out of hand / we cohabitate with the nasty / we live with the worst,” and the piece jolted awake.

Cohen and his dancers were rehearsing the 4th-9th sections of their latest evening-length performance, anyyywayyy whatever, a tightly woven work of text and movement that will premiere in Brooklyn at Amant on September 26. A few minutes into the run-through, the dancers dropped to the ground and spread their legs. “We!” they shouted at the space in front of them. “Are! Queer!” They slapped the ground with each syllable, then spun around and repeated the same phrase. “We! Are! Queer!” Then they paused and, in a sing-song voice, teasingly added, “It’s true.”

“So this,” I thought as I watched, “is what it’s about.” I was right but also wrong. Cohen is not interested in ‘abouts’ or narrative legibility. They are many unpindownable things, and so are their performances.

“It was a very slow build into this type of work,” Cohen told me, meaning the combination of movement and spoken text which they call ‘movement art.’ (They are wary to call themself a choreographer, as they weren’t trained in dance; I will bestow that well-deserved title on them). “When I was a child, I wanted to be a poet and an actor, and those two things sort of converged in the creation of the work that I’m making now.” They followed that dream, studied theater and wrote poetry—they often appear at poetry readings around town and published a collection of poems with dancer/artist/writer Simone Forti, began a prolific painting practice and founded the Mutual Aid Immigration Network, a trilingual free assistance hotline for people detained in immigration detention centers across the United States. While living in Los Angeles, they experimented with what they call performances of the mind: reading aloud long lists they’d written in their studio to audiences asked to close their eyes. Then, slowly, they started to introduce movement into their work, which has since appeared at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023, Judson Memorial Church as part of Movement Research and The Center for Performance Research, among other venues.

The first iteration of anyyywayyy whatever was a two-person show (performed by Maddie Hopfield and Ray Tsung-Jui Tsou) commissioned by Caterina Zevola for the inaugural Performissima at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles in Paris in October 2024. This new commission premiering at Amant extends the piece to an hour and includes four more performers (Laurel Atwell, Sally Butin, Deja Rion and Fiona Smith).

When asked about the work’s title, Cohen said it refers to the frustration and despair they feel about the current state of the world; both a personal failing and cultural inability to “fully absorb the multiple crises that we are all experiencing.” A common response to crises, they’ve noticed, is to look away, to keep scrolling, to keep walking by. “For a lot of people it’s like ‘anyway, whatever.’”

Cohen started working on the piece’s text-based score at the beginning of 2024. “I tend to think of myself as a channeler or a kind of conduit. Not only am I writing what’s on my mind, but I’m also accumulating language that then ends up in the writing itself.” Cohen reads voraciously and widely, and glimpses of those influences—ranging from science fiction writers to queer theorists to philosophers and poets—make their way into the footnotes of the score, which will be printed as a chapbook created by artist and poet Leslie Rosario-Olivo and distributed to the audience. Metallica lyrics and lines from Star Wars make their way in, too, as do excerpts of conversations and text exchanges with friends. “There’s brilliance there at times,” Cohen said, “in our conversations with people.”

The result is multilayered. “There’s writing about the genocide, but it’s not about that. There’s writing about my sex life, but it’s not about that. There’s writing about sex and queerness in general. It’s not about that. It’s this kind of mosaic of ideas that overlap and intersect.”

Cohen then brought the completed score into the rehearsals, though it was further edited as they all built the piece together. The performers’ slips of tongue, Cohen explained, often charged the writing with more energy and meaning.

The next step was creating the movement, which, for Cohen, is always a very collaborative process. They will offer a suggestion (like “What if we did some energetic ballet-like movements?” or “Do something a little like Graham.”), and the dancers will move around and say, “Like this?” This conversation continues until Cohen has shaped the movement into a phrase. “It’s like throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks,” they said. “I have to go through a lot of bad ideas to get to what makes sense stylistically.” The movement vocabulary, as wide-ranging as the text, draws from hip-hop, ballet, stage combat, modern dance and post-modern dance.

Along the way, Cohen merges the spoken text with the choreography in a way that isn’t redundant or interpretive. “We’re trying to devise movements that not only push back against the writing, but also amplify it in a different way…There are what I would call material juxtapositions of movement and sound.”

One way the performers achieve this juxtaposition is through specific tones of voice. They often employ certain registers that they’ve given labels to, like “internet voice,” “yoga mom voice” and “bro voice.” Universally recognizable tones that evince narrative but, in this case, are disconnected from any specific story. Sometimes the tone matches the text; sometimes not. Sometimes the tone matches the movement; sometimes not. There are common vernaculars–both sonically and physically–that appear and disappear within the work, portholes through which the audience can comfortably enter before realizing they actually have no idea where they are.

For example, the line “my roommate will be back soon so” feels, for many of us, familiar. We’ve all asked someone to leave without asking them to leave, or been awkwardly asked to leave ourselves. Originally, Butin said this with an “fboy” tone while embodying an “fboy,” which was overkill. Cohen decided to have Butin keep the tone but embody a fierce runway model while looking an audience member directly in the eye when saying it. At another point, Butin and Hopfield do a “ballet-adjacent phrase” while Tsung-Jui Tsou and Atwell try to bring everyone together. Butin punches Atwell in the stomach while crossing the stage, to emphasize the line “without suicide / with out WHAT.” The elegance of ballet is layered with the intense text and random physical violence in a way that doesn’t further any specific narrative, but offers, nevertheless, a strong statement.

The heart of the piece can be found in the text and movement, but design takes the performance to the next level. The cast will wear elevated streetwear created by New York-based designer Melitta Baumeister. And the lighting design, inspired by raves and queer nightlife spaces, is by Bessie-nominated Sarai Frazier.

It turns out anyyywayyy whatever isn’t one thing but all the things: poignant, political, funny, sexy, of-the-moment, intellectual, serious. It’s a wakeup call to our apathetic culture and also a reminder that we are not alone. That we are all in this together, for better or worse.

Barnett Cohen’s anyyywayyy whatever is at 306 Maujer Street, Brooklyn, on Friday, September 26 at 7:00 pm, and Saturday, September 27 at 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm.

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