That obscure, unattainable object of desire: your own art

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Gia Kourlas

Left, Dean Moss; and, right, a costume detail from “Petra,” Mr. Moss’s new performance work, a blend of dance, theater, video and audience participation.

Desire and power, the New York performance scene, the Hindu goddess Chinnamasta and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” are all mixed into Dean Moss’s latest performative stew, “Petra.” Mr. Moss, 63, finds parallels between the film and his life as a director and choreographer. As he put it, “That process where you never attain what your desire is became something that I was interested in.” For “Petra,” which opens at Performance Space New York — formerly Performance Space 122 — on Jan. 23 as part of the 2018 Coil Festival, Mr. Moss has assembled an all-star cast of women whose members were chosen in part for their presence in New York’s performance world. (The Fassbinder film, from 1972, also features an all-female cast.) [More]