Among the highlights of its first eight years are: Bernd Alois Zimmermann's harrowing Die Soldaten, in which the audience moved «through the music;» the unprecedented six - week residency of the Royal Shakespeare Company in their own theater rebuilt in the drill hall; a massive digital sound and video environment by Ryoji Ikeda; a sprawling gauzy, multi-sensory labyrinth created by Ernesto Neto; the event of a thread, a site -
specific installation by Ann Hamilton; the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company across three separate stages; the New York Philharmonic performing Karlheinz Stockhausen's sonic masterpiece Gruppen with three orchestras surrounding the audience; WS by Paul McCarthy, a monumental installation of fantasy, excess, and dystopia; a sonic environment that blurred the boundaries between artist and audience created by the xx; an immersive Macbeth set in a Scottish heath and henge by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh; tears become... streams become..., a
genre -
defying collaboration between artist Douglas Gordon and pianist Hélène Grimaud, which flooded the Armory's drill hall with an installation of water, light, and music; and HABEAS CORPUS, a performance and installation by Laurie Anderson based on the story of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee that examines lost identity, memory, and the resiliency of the human body and spirit.