Antony Hegarty on "Swanlights"

Camille A. Brown at The Joyce

Camille A. Brown (Photo by Matt Karas)

If you think you've seen all Camille A. Brown has to offer, take a trip over to The Joyce Theater this weekend, and you will discover or rediscover:

• City of Rain: I had never seen this ensemble piece, premiered in 2010. It's a good look at how Brown, popular for her character-driven dances, can work an abstract concept over space, flooding her stage with the physical turbulence of an octet of continuously winding, unfurling bodies. Mora-Amina Parker, an imposing performer, is particularly effective and impressive here.

• The Evolution of A Secured Feminine: Sure you've seen this solo a million times, on and off Brown's body. But you haven't seen it the way Brown has reclaimed it in this season. Of course, it has her signature quirky timing and seamlessness, but she's dancing it even stronger these days, filling it out even more and owning it. A good thing getting better. Worth a new look.

• Mr. TOL E. RAncE: Part 1: The program notes quote Langston Hughes' reference to humor as "unconscious therapy." Brown's performers genuinely dance the hell out of this one, which is ironic since it depicts Black minstrels dancing the hell out of stuff with smiles frozen on their faces and modern-day TV dance show contestants dancing the hell out of stuff, all while a brazen MC pours on the inflammatory racial stereotyping. Same shit, different day. I should also mention Isabela Dos Santos' animation in which, through a series of unfortunate events, a hapless guy loses one body part after another until he is, finally, only a head kicked away by a soccer player. So pretty caustic humor, if humor it is, and I can't say I find it terribly therapeutic. At first, I wasn't sure what, if anything, Brown wanted us to feel, if not horror. But Brown's concluding solo, set to a melancholy piano version of "What A Wonderful World," seemed to bring it all back to the unpredictable condition of the performer, then as now. It's also simply another good chance to see what makes Brown a stunning, affecting soloist.

• The Creation: Plus 40: Yes, be there. It's Carmen de Lavallade. She dances a re-imagination of her husband Geoffrey Holder's 1972 piece, narrating and embodying the creation of the universe by a lonely god and the development of a human figure from feeble to regal. A convincing and captivating storyteller.

• Been There, Done That: The marvelously loosey-goosey Juel D. Lane and Brown romp around as a couple of performers competing with one another for the limelight and the audience's love. Fun and just short enough to not wear out its welcome.

• The Groove to Nobody's Business: Seen this nutty one lots of times, too? See it again. Everyone's wonderful in it.

Camille A. Brown at The Joyce Theater -- Today, 2pm and Sunday, 7:30pm (tickets)

The Joyce Theater

8th Avenue and 19th Street, Manhattan

(directions)

Rudi van Dantzig, 78

Rudi van Dantzig, Provocative Dutch Choreographer, Dies at 78
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 26, 2012

Nicol Williamson, 75

Nicol Williamson, a Mercurial Actor, Is Dead at 75
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 25, 2012

The Arab contribution to Western music

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

presents

The Arab Contribution to Western Music

Thursday, February 9, 6pm

Without the brilliant, sophisticated music that informed the courts of Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus, European music as we know it today would be quite different. Arabic music traveled west with Jewish troubadours and took root in Moorish Spain, lecturer and author Nimet Habachy will explain during this event. Refreshments will be served.

With musical examples from both worlds performed live by Simon Shaheen, the renowned violinist and oud player, we trace the influence of music of the Arab world to Mozart's Magic Flute and The Abduction from the Seraglio.

 Tickets: $25 (unreserved seating)

The Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall

Uris Center for Education

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, Manhattan

(directions)

Valentine's Day is Arts Day in Albany

On Tuesday, February 14, join Dance/NYC and other New York State arts advocates in a day of face-to-face meetings with Albany legislators in support of public funding for the arts.

Get the facts, learn what you can do and get involved here.

Leichter dance: all the way live and outspoken

Shay Wafer, 651 Arts's new Executive Director, and Anna Glass, Managing Director, were on hand last evening to usher in a new season of Live & Outspoken. This popular series, presented at the Mark Morris Dance Center, features conversations between stars and innovators of the performing arts and samples of the artists' work. A magical interview between Ntozake Shange and Marc Bamuthi Joseph was one of my highlights of 2011.

Last night's session paired the richly talented Eisa Davis (playwright, singer-songwriter, actress, dancer) with dancer-choreographer Nicholas Leichter. Davis and Leichter go back a long way. When she first moved to New York, she took up residence in his basement, and they have collaborated. So it was no surprise that this conversation would be a breeze. Davis brought to it not only personal insight but fresh imagination, a real interest in discovery.

Eisa Davis (Photo by Colman Domingo)

Nicholas Leichter

Reflecting on his club-kid period, Leichter reached back to one source of the intensity in his dancing and dance-making.

"I did it so young and so early when it was still in this dark period," he said. "I saw a lot of crazy shit, though I never did any of that. There was hysteria, but there was also a crazy amount of passion on the dance floor. Such energy. It just ignited me.

"It wasn't as segregated as it is now. It was kind of pre-hip hop and felt like what modern dance should be--a mix of a lot of things."

Leichter developed an attitude towards concert dance that was a mix of a lot of things, too--the fire and fluidity of club dancing, yes, but also the discipline of the ballet studio. A technical wiz kid himself, he says that the rigor of his training still underlies all of his work, although it might not be as overt as it used to be.

The evening's talk was interspersed with excerpts from a smokin' duet (from Twenty, Leichter's evening-length work-in-progress) that features the choreographer and a younger dancer, Bryan Strimpel. Here's a bit of Strimpel.


French Kiss (excerpt from Black Barbra) from Nicholas Leichter Dance on Vimeo.

That's all fine, but you really must see Strimpel and Leichter dance together, a collaboration that, the choreographer says, revitalized his own dancing.

Different in age (by almost twenty years), race, body type and sexual orientation, Strimpel seems to have absorbed and enhanced the qualities that have always been wildly magnetic about Leichter--an elastic body nevertheless given to delivering rapid, sharp, percussive language, the entire body as speech and gesture. Leichter mentioned that critics, admiring of his dancing, sometimes chide him for not having dancers who can replicate his abilities. I suspect that there's a subtle distinction here: It's not about having dancers who look like you and dance like you but focusing on dancers who can stand up to you. Lanky, blond Strimpel does just that, approaching his work in a dramatically sexy deadpan way, matching Leichter at every turn and then some. The results are electrifying.

Catch up with everything from Nicholas Leichter Dance here, and with 651 Arts' new season here.