American dancer and choreographer and 2026 MacArthur Fellow Trajal Harrell’s Five Friends in Five Acts (2025) was inspired by the relationships between the influential post–World War II circle of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly—both as artistic contemporaries and queer men. The artists met as students at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an incubator for interdisciplinary and boundary-breaking work inspired by the legacy of Dada. Performed over two days in the Petrie Court and the Temple of Dendur at the Museum, the work made its US debut.
Photographs by Paula Lobo
Photographs by Ellie Holliday
