Director & Choreographer
John Heginbotham

Creative Consultant
Andrea Weber

Composer
Colin Jacobsen

Sound Designer
Omar Zubair

Costume Design
Maile Okamura

Lighting Design
serena wong
Emily Schmit

Performers
4 dancers, 1 actor, 1 violinist

Run Time
60 minutes

Top 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.

World Premiere: August 1, 2024
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn, NY

Featured in New York Times T Magazine T List: Capturing the Wonders of Mushrooms Through Dance

You Look Like a Fun Guy wishes to be about nothing, but sometimes it is about something.

Omar Zubair, an insightful collaborator on Fun Guy, pointed out to me that among their many powers, fungi are capable of eating death. Fungi may then remix the raw, dead materials and organize them into new life. In the mycelial spirit of connecting what has existed and what may now exist, the creation of Fun Guy has frequently felt like a conversation with composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham, imagining and exploring their methods of inviting nature into their close artistic work together.

Among the thoughtful, beloved members of our cast, production, administrative, and creative teams, I wish to focus a light on longtime dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Andrea Weber. She represents this beautiful Cage and Cunningham lineage - this direct connection - which as far as I can tell was full of rigorous, serious experimentation, and dedicated playfulness. Again, the thought of a mycelium is present here.

You Look Like a Fun Guy is inspired by the story of John Cage's experience winning 5 million Lire (approximately $8,000) on the 1959 Italian game show 'Lascia o Raddoppio'. As an avid forager, he won the money due to his extensive knowledge of mushrooms. He then shared his winnings with his close collaborator and life partner, Merce Cunningham, specifically so that Merce could purchase a VW bus to transport the Merce Cunningham Dance Company during the ensemble's early touring years. Fun Guy celebrates generosity, whimsy, dedication to making art, and John Cage's beautiful relationship with nothing.

A mushroom walks into a bar. The bartender says...

- John Heginbotham

You Look Like a Fun Guy has been developed in part with support from White Oak, supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth; Wave Hill Public Garden & Cultural Center; and Governors Island Trust. Colin Jacobsen’s score for You Look Like a Fun Guy was commissioned with support from the O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation. Additional support provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.