Chipaumire and Zollar make it "Visible"

Three Visible Dancers: Left to right, Dancers Kota Yamazaki from Japan, Judith Jacobs from Holland and New Yorker Marguerite Hemmings, who also is a choreographer with Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program, make their visible moves. Photo by: Julieta Cervantes


Nora Chipaumire and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar--critically-acclaimed Bessie Award winners and two of the people I most cherish in dance--will present the world premiere of their collaborative project, Visible, at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse on October 12. This ensemble work deals with the struggle of being a foreigner in US society. 

“Visible attempts to reveal the conflicted nature of my experience, the loneliness of the foreigner, the constant push and pull between homeland and new frontier. It explores the idea of community versus the individual,” said the Zimbabwe-born Chipaumire.

Commissioned and nurtured by Harlem Stage, Visible features an international cast and creative team: 

Souleymane Badolo (Burkina Faso), former Urban Bush Women member Ca.Dé (Guadeloupe), Marguerite Hemmings (Jamaica), Judith Jacobs (Holland),  historian John O. Perpener II (Washington, D.C.), Kota Yamazaki (Japan), who also designed the costumes, and percussionists Bashir Shakur and David L. Alston.

Visible runs October 12-15 (7:30pm). For more information and ticketing, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Legal issues in choreography and dance

Dance Magazine and Dance Films Association present

Legal Issues in Choreography and Dance

Thursday, October 20, 4pm

This class will provide an overview of the legal issues that affect non-profit and for-profit dance companies, individual creators, choreographers, and performers, such as dancers. Topics discussed include: business entity formation, intellectual property protection, rights of publicity, licensing, and labor and employment. This class will be taught by Elena M. Paul, Esq., VLA’s Executive Director. All registration fees are non-refundable.

Registration fees, form and other details here

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts
1 East 53rd Street (between 5th and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

And now, a little morning music...

Directed by Kaz Phillips Safer (www.catbirdpictures.com)

Starring:
MaryLouise Burke as The Drinking Buddy

featuring:
Sam Pinkleton, Dan Safer, and Sean Donovan as The Boys.
with David Clement and Rob Bailey

Cinematography by Chase Bowman
Edited by Kaz Phillips Safer
Choreography by Dan Safer
Art Direction by Rachel Hauck

"Drinking Buddy (featuring Marylouise Burke)" by David Clement (ASCAP) is on
iTunes at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/drinking-buddy-feat.-marylouise/id467678720?

Produced and Recorded by Rob Bailey at Fancy Studios
Vocal: Marylouise Burke
Guitar: David Clement
Bass: Tony Garnier
Harmonica: Rob Bailey
Additional vocals: Erin Evermore Bailey

Locations provided by Clandestino Bar and the lovely Kourtney Rutherford

A special screening of "Pariah"

Back in March, I posted my review of Pariah, a wonderful new film by Dee Rees about the life of a young Black lesbian. Now here's an invitation to join the Brooklyn-based Black and Women of Color lesbian organization Circle of Voices for a special screening in support of this important film:

Wednesday, October 5 at 8pm

Universal Screening Room
666 5th Avenue
(between 5th and 6th Avenues; entrance on West 53rd Street; 6th Floor) Manhattan (map)

A world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the contemporary drama Pariah is the feature-length expansion of writer/director Dee Rees' award-winning 2007 short film Pariah. Spike Lee is among the feature's executive producers.

Adepero Oduye, who had earlier starred in the short film, portrays Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a 17-year-old African-American woman who lives with her parents Audrey and Arthur (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell) and younger sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. She has a flair for poetry, and is a good student at her local high school. Alike is quietly but firmly embracing her identity as a lesbian. With the sometimes boisterous support of her best friend, out lesbian Laura (Pernell Walker), Alike is especially eager to find a girlfriend. At home, her parents' marriage is strained and there is further tension in the household whenever Alike's development becomes a topic of discussion. Pressed by her mother into making the acquaintance of a colleague's daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), Alike finds Bina to be unexpectedly refreshing to socialize with. Wondering how much she can confide in her family, Alike strives to get through adolescence with grace, humor, and tenacity--sometimes succeeding, sometimes not, but always moving forward.

Check out the trailer.

To attend the screening, you must RSVP to Wellington Love at wellingtonlove@15minutespr.com.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to type this code--Circle of Voices--in your Subject line.

Apply now for Dance & Performance Summer Institute!

Makeda Thomas's Roots & Wings Movement! Dance & Performance Institute is accepting applications now for 2012 Artist Residencies.

The Dance & Performance SUMMER Institute - New Waves! (July 18-August 2, 2012) will bring 50 international dance artists to Trinidad. The two-week Summer Institute offers intensive master classes and workshops in contemporary dance, Caribbean dance, hip-hop, composition and repertory with an outstanding faculty of international dance artists.

Through informal dialogues and Institute programs, participants create community, build connections with other dance professionals, and experience the unique cultural landscape of Trinidad & Tobago. Classes and workshops are held, primarily, at the University of Trinidad & Tobago, Academy for the Performing Arts, held within the National Academy of the Performing Arts in the heart of the nation's capital, Port of Spain.

FACULTY INCLUDE: Makeda Thomas, Chris Walker, Ananya Chatterjea, Dyane Harvey-Salaam, Rennie Harris, Sonja Dumas, Ras Mikey C, and Delton Frank.

Professional dance artists/scholars may apply through October 1, 2011. So, hurry! Click here.

About Makeda Thomas

Sally Silvers really takes the "Prize"

Andy Horwitz of Culturebot said it all: You really can't beat the lineup of choreographers and theater directors involved with this new project--A Prize Every Time--created by the sage Sally Silvers:

Choreographers: Monica Bill Barnes, Jane Comfort, Pat Catterson, Terry Creach, Wally Cardona, Douglas Dunn, Maura Donohue, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Patricia Hoffbauer, Sarah East Johnson, Pooh Kaye, Jonathan Kinzel, Bebe Miller, Rosalind Newman, Sarah Skaggs, Gus Solomon, Jr., Muna Tseng, Arturo Vidich and Bill Young

Directors: John Jesurun, Young Jean Lee, Matthew Maguire, Theresa Buchheister, Damien Gray, Dan Safer, Gayle Stahlhuth, Tony Torn, George Emilio Sanchez, Scott Lyons and Jeffrey Jones and others

Hooray!  Read on about A Prize Every Time at Roulette October 12–16.

Ailey and City Center do a deal

Alvin Ailey Signs Longterm Deal With City Center
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, September 26, 2011

Hawaii's Living Waters

Montclair State University's dazzling Peak Performances series will present the U.S. mainland premiere of Kūlanihāko‘i: Living Waters, a new hula drama created by the hula masters of Nā Kinimakalehua.

October 20-21, 7:30pm
October 22, 8pm
October 23, 3pm

Situated high in the heavens, beyond the influence of even the gods themselves, is the mystical Kūlanihāko‘i, an elemental lake from which all life flows. Through dance, chant, storytelling and dramatic interpretation, Living Waters draws from an array of enchanting Hawaiian myths tracing back over 2,000 years, highlighting the need for an equilibrium in the connection between mankind and nature.

For further information and ticketing, click here or call 973-655-5112. For directions, parking and weekend shuttle buses from Manhattan, click here.

Why I no longer consider myself a dance sniffer

...er, I mean, dance critic.

The following is my response to Joseph Carman's Dance Magazine article, "Why Do They Say What They Say?" (see here)

Dancers tend to overlook the fact that a critic’s first commitment is to the readers. – Joseph Carman

Well, actually, who are the readers? By and large, when it comes to dance criticism, in New York City at least, the readers are dancers. Everybody else is reading criticism about pretty much anything other than dance. Doubt me? Just ask around.

“The critic has the obligation to report on the imaginativeness of this art and the measure of truth and beauty that is there,” says Joan Acocella, who writes for The New Yorker. “That goal, which I think is the overriding goal, can conflict with the virtue of kindness.”

Dance artists aren’t asking for kindness–to be handled with kid gloves and patted on the head by someone whose real job is the official designation of what’s true and beautiful. It’s condescending to treat dancers as if they are delicate children cringing from the threat of abuse. Dance artists are looking for fairness, not kindness.

“I’m not emotionally involved with your career.” -- Allan Ulrich

Again, I don’t think dance artists are asking for emotional involvement with their careers. They have family, friends, lovers and perhaps students and fans for that degree of engagement. There’s alienation and unwarranted hostility in this statement.

Alastair Macaulay, the chief dance critic for The New York Times, says that in his fledgling years as a dance critic in London, he was what he terms “an angry young critic.” Currently, he feels that he would lose more sleep over reviews that overpraise than those that go negative. He also cautions dancers about obsessing over criticism. “Generally I follow the rule that performers are ill-advised to read about themselves,” says Macaulay....”“They read reviews at their own peril.”

Sleep well. But while you’re awake and able to think about it, consider this: Dancers, just like all adult professionals, have every right to read what’s written about them, if they so choose. It’s not so much that their paper-thin egos are chafing but that they know that nasty reviews–and especially ones published in the New York Times, for god's sake–have potential influence over arts presenters and funders, as well as potential audiences. Hell, I’d monitor every word that was written about me in your paper if I thought it might lose me opportunities and funding, especially in today’s climate. Corporations keep track of what's written and said about them in the media. Why should dance professionals be any less concerned?

But Macaulay claims that he doesn’t place body slamming high on his list of critical talking points. “I learned from Lynn Seymour,” he says, “that a great dancer can transcend what is not considered the ideal body type.”

How generous.

One point on which dance writers disagree is the boundary between the critic and the performers. “Choreographers and dancers don’t understand that critics are not part of the dance community,” says Ulrich.

Oh, no? Increasingly, critics–or, at least, people interested in writing about dance–are indeed part of the dance community. Who do you think gives a damn enough to commit to this work with its still-inadequate opportunities, compensation and recognition? Who do you think applies whenever courses in dance writing are offered?

Dancers themselves are showing interest in documenting their art and addressing its issues in relevant, meaningful and innovative ways. Engagement and advocacy do not preclude intelligent discernment and, frankly, it is disrespectful to imply that they do.

If the role of Dance Critic, as defined by most of the mainstream writers interviewed for Carman's article, requires a kind of elevation and walling off of the writer from the written about, I no longer recognize it as anything that defines me or has meaning for me.

Singer Cesaria Evora to retire

Oh, no! Great singer announces retirement at 70 ( video)
by Norman Lebrecht, Slipped Disc, September 23, 2011

The guys who gave you your bad review

Critic and former dancer Joseph Carman takes up the issue of negative dance criticism--and how critics choose or or do not choose to relate to the artists they write about--with several mainstream dance critics in this article for Dance Magazine. Click here.

Heather Olson's "Shy showoff"

I hear that the rest of The Chocolate Factory's run of Heather Olson's Shy showoff is sold out. But you could try calling 212-352-3101 and see if they've started a waiting list.

The choreographer's 45-minute trio, danced with Levi Gonzalez and Erin Gerken, strikes me as the kind of mystery box of quiet surprises that might make for a cozy idyll on a rainy weekend.

There's wit, a relaxed but distinct precision and even a little Chrissie Hynde (always welcome) when you least expect it. This abstract piece works its modest glamor through an airy, luminous clarity of form and performance. Its shy, showoff imagery melts on the tongue the way a dream, no matter how lucid in the moment, melts away into the night. You must attend--in both senses of that word. I hope you get in.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(directions)

Back to The (New) Ohio

The once-endangered Ohio Theatre is back, under Artistic Director Robert Lyons, in a new location, rechristened New Ohio Theatre, and you're invited to party!

Come to an Open House this Friday, September 23, 8pm-midnight

Free admission 

New Ohio Theatre
154 Christopher Street (between Greenwich and Washington Streets)
(map and directions)

Yvonne Rainer to present her "Poems"

On Tuesday, October 18, The Kitchen will present a special reading of Poems, the first book of poems by choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, who will read the selections herself. Published by artist Paul Chan's Badlands Unlimited, the book is comprised of works that have never been published, most written in the late 1990s. Full of wit and candor, Poems offers a window into the life and mind of one of America's greatest living artists.

The reading will be followed by a conversation between Rainer and The Kitchen's Executive Director and Chief Curator Tim Griffin, who penned an introduction to the volume.

After the reading, Rainer will remain to sign copies of Poems, which will be available for purchase.

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30pm -- Free admission


The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Gibney Dance Center celebrates community in dance

Gibney Dance Center Launch Party tonight
by Maura Nguyen Donohue, Culturebot, September 21, 2011

Culturebot's Andy Horwitz on Ruth Maleczech

Mabou Mines : Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth By Day
by Andy Horwitz, Culturebot, September 19, 2011

Annual Denise Jefferson Celebration

The Annual Denise Jefferson Celebration, an evening dedicated to the legacy of Denise Jefferson, Director of The Ailey School for 26 years, will feature performances and works by special guest artists:

LaChanze (Tony Award Winner)
Margo Jefferson (Pulitzer Prize-winning writer)
William Forsythe
Carmen De Lavallade
Ronald K. Brown (Artistic Director of Evidence and Choreographer of Porgy and Bess)
Karine Plaintadit (former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Tony Nominee)
Nacho Duato
Aubrey Lynch (former Associate Producer of Disney's The Lion King and Director of the Dance Program for Harlem School of the Arts)
Francesca Harper
Dwight Rhoden
Daniel Gwirtzman
Elisa Monte Dance
The Francesca Harper Project

Saturday and Sunday, November 5-6 at 8pm

The Ailey Citigroup Theater

405 West 55th Street (at 9th Avenue), Manhattan

(directions)

The audience is invited join the performers after Saturday night’s performance at the Contemporary African Art Gallery (330 West 108th Street at Riverside Drive) to celebrate the life of Ms. Jefferson.

A Livestream of the The Annual Denise Jefferson Celebration will be broadcast live in the Ailey Studios for $10 both nights.  Tickets sold at the door.

TICKETS: $50 ($30 children/students/dancers with valid ID) plus service charge @ www.smarttix.com or 212-868-4444

R.E.M. calls it a day

The End of R.E.M., and They Feel Fine
by James C. McKinley, Jr., The New York Times, September 21, 2011

Go on singing, more, more: Jobim remembered

So I come back to my first note
As I must come back to you...

--"Samba de Uma Nota Só"/"One Note Samba" by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça 

Music according to Tom Jobim (aka, The Music according to Antonio Carlos Jobim), a new film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, takes me back not only to the heyday of bossa nova but to my own days of mad love for the sounds of Brazil and Brazil-infused jazz. Jobim's lilting, romantic music flashed through my nerves and sent my young imagination reeling. Now dos Santos brings all of that back with this unusual documentary tribute, soon to open at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New York Film Festival 2011.

Rejecting the expected voice-over and talking-heads approach, Dos Santos allows music--plus an extraordinary collage of vintage, and sometimes quite worn, film and video performance clips--to tell the story of Jobim's career in Brazil and abroad and the huge influence his songs had on performers around the globe. If you're old enough, you probably remember Jobim for "Garota de Ipanema" ("The Girl from Ipanema")--a worldwide 1960s hit that gets satiric treatment here through a surprising series of perfomance clips from the cute to the beyond-belief ridiculous. But there was so much more covert power to the delicious, delicate magnetism of Jobim's range of songs. You can feel that sensual, if wistful, pull in "Dindi," "Insensatez" ("How Insensitive"), "Desafinado" ("Off key"), "Wave," "Corcovado" ("Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars") and the haunting "A felicidade" ("Happiness"), the theme from Black Orpheus. Written solo or with lyricists like Newton Mendonça and Vinicius de Moraes, these lovely standards are songs to curl up inside.

Nearly seventeen years after Jobim's passing, it's both cheerful and poignant to watch him perform his music in this film. The composer's warmth and joy animate his every appearance even as we watch time thicken and age him. Even in one of his late performances, which looks rather labored, you can sense his commitment to the music and to his audience.

Dos Santos and co-director Dora Jobim, Jobim's granddaughter, have compiled footage recording sensational interpretations of Jobim songs by Gal Costa, Silvia Telles, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diana Krall (who, sexy enough in English, wows the Brazilians by singing in Portuguese), Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Errol Garner, Jane Monheit, Stacey Kent and Milton Nascimento among many others. If I could design a heaven, Sarah Vaughn would be singing "Wave," an astonishingly sensitive Frank Sinatra would be dueting with Jobim on "Girl from Ipanema," and Ella Fitzgerald would smash her bottle of champagne on the good ship "Desafinado."

To borrow and flip some lyrics from "How Insensitive," let me be clear: This love affair ain't over.

Music according to Tom Jobim

by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Brazil, 2011 (Regina Films)
Portuguese with English subtitles
88 minutes

October 2 at 6pm and 8:30pm (tickets)

A presentation of the New York Film Festival
Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center
Broadway and 65th Street, Manhattan

Subway: #1 local train to 66th Street/Lincoln Center Station
Bus: The M5, M7, M10, M11, M66 and M104 bus lines all stop within one block of Lincoln Center.

re-Jones/Zane

New York Live Arts has launched its inaugural season with Body Against Body, an exhilarating program of early works by Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane, performed by Jones's current troupe members and dance celebrity guests such as Janet Eilber, Vicky Shick, Richard Move and Matthew Rushing. I attended last night's opener, the first of two discrete programs that run through September 25.

Reasons to check in with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at this juncture are many. Body Against Body revisits conceptual works--such as Monkey Run Road (1979) and Continuous Replay (1977), with its full-on, un-selfconscious nudity and lightly ritualistic accumulation and repetition--that remain startlingly airy and clear in structure and delightful today. The troupe season's title can imply a cluster of meanings--the sensuality of flesh against flesh, the playfulness of adept physical instruments directed by equally top-level minds, the supple and sturdy support of one partner for the other. All of these meanings and values can be found in the works on display here as throughout the best of the art Jones has made as survivor of his personal and professional relationship with Zane, who passed in 1988.

Jones and Zane did the one-on-one format especially right. So, if you can still manage to grab a ticket, be sure to see Monkey Run Road (with the choreographers' casually elegant, harmonious roles taken by Talli Jackson and Erick Montes) and Valley Cottage: A Study (1980/1981) with a rotating cast of partners. Last night's pair included Paul Matteson and Jennifer Nugent, Jones/Zane troupe members and "downtown" dance celebrity artists in their own right. Matteson and Nugent will also appear in Program B's Blauvelt Mountain (A Fiction).

Perhaps, by breathing new life into these historic duets, Jones intends to work some subliminal mojo on any remaining skeptics as he begins his own grand partnership with the former Dance Theater Workshop, host of the original productions of two of these seminal works. It's good to be reminded of where Jones came from, this searching, breakthrough choreographer who now, with Carla Peterson and the rest of the NYLA team, hopes to break down barriers for other artists. His new season should serve as a blessing on NYLA's ambitious venture.

Company performers: Antonio Brown, Talli Jackson, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leornard, Jr., I-Lin Liu, Paul Matteson, Erick Montes, Jennifer Nugent and Jenna Riegel. Guest artists vary by performance.

With costumes by Liz Prince and lighting by Robert Wierzel


The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Body Against Body continues tonight and September 20-24 at 7:30; Sundays September 18 and September 25 at 5pm. Pre-show Talk: September 21 with dance critic Marcia B. Siegel and Bill T. Jones.

Post-Show Talk: September 23 with Bill T. Jones, Carla Peterson, Janet Wong and the dance company

Check the box office for ticket availability: 212-924-0077

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Archiving "Dance in America"

Merrill Brockway’s ‘Dance in America’ for New Generation
by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, September 16, 2011

PERFORMA internships

Available Positions:

Press and Marketing Internship
Curatorial Internship
Director’s Office Internship

Click for information: Internships • PERFORMA

Black women playwrights on Broadway

Plays by Katori Hall, Lydia R. Diamond and Suzan-Lori Parks
by Charles Isherwood, The New York Times, September 15, 2011

Remembering Ellen Stewart: 'La MaMa Cantata'

'La MaMa Cantata' to Celebrate Ellen Stewart
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, September 15, 2011

KC for KC: Grand new arts center

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Set to Open in Kansas City
A. G. Sulzberger, The New York Times, September 15, 2011

Piper: Decide Who You Are

From artist and philosopher Adrian Piper's Decide Who You Are series (click here). The photo is of the young Anita Hill.

Also see culture blogger Meghan's post (here) in A Blog is Forever on Piper's Decide Who You Are #24 (A Moving Target). I also saw that piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's After the Gold Rush show (last night at the wonderful Grand Tour for members), and it is a must-see. Like Meghan, I was unable to find an image of it online, but she posts the image and text of Piper's similar Decide Who You Are #1 Skinned Alive.

See After the Gold Rush: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, now through January 2, 2012 in the Met's Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, 2nd floor. Details here.

NOĊTÚ: A breakthrough in Irish dance?

Be neither dismayed nor motivated nor distracted in any way by the glam lingerie-ad look of the publicity shot. Or by the title's invocation of the Irish word for "bare, strip, uncover."  Fun--if misplaced--marketing, that's all.

You'll quickly discover that NOĊTÚ--presented by Breandán de Gallaí's valiant Ériu Dance Company on the tiny stage of the Irish Repertory Theatre--has nothing more salacious about it than an impossibly vague, if happy-go-lucky, ménage à trois moment (including lovely, lissome Peta Anderson who always looks as if she's just waiting to be scooped up for a Broadway musical, preferably not Riverdance.) The stripping down--literal and metaphoric--is all about emotional and psychological transparency, as well as finding the freedom to be yourself and finally dance what's in your heart!!

And despite de Gallaí's attempt to slip the ties that once bound him to the massively successful Riverdance and its ilk, there's not a lot of uprising happening here. Take a traditional form of cultural dance--in this case, Irish step dancing--punk up the look of the dancers, interweave contemporary movement, hint at a few characters and some kind of narrative, and set it all to music by Björk, Cake, Kate Bush, Leonard Cohen and, very briefly, The Talking Heads? Nothing here is going to frighten the horses, at least no New York City horses. It's not going to send today's typical theater-going tourists screaming into the night.

I'm not immune to the pleasures of Irish step dancing, which can be as cool as tap or as fierce as flamenco. And I respect Ériu's performers; these champs--hailing from Ireland and several other nations--work their asses off and look terrific doing so, especially in those authoritative black clogs with their little silver buckles--very sharp, very sharp. I think we can celebrate these dancers while also questioning how well the show works its premise (to reveal what's really going on in the minds and souls of talented dance artists), its text and dramatic expression (obvious, awkward, superficial) and its overall episodic structure.

The fastest way for me to explain what's dispiriting about de Gallaí's structure is to ask you to imagine picking up a book of about twenty short stories. The book's cover photo is, of course, as mildly titillating as the publicity photo for NOĊTÚ.

You start reading the first story. Within the first few paragraphs, you've got the point of it. But the story has ten or fifteen more pages. Dutifully, you keep reading to the end, hoping for a turn or twist or deepening or revelation that never comes. You take up the second story. Same deal. Within minutes, you know everything you need to know about the characters and the narrative. Even so, you keep reading its remaining pages. Story #3... Need I say more?

NOĊTÚ lasts a little over an hour but feels as if it's that length only because most of the various cuts of music are used in their entirety, the choreography expanding to fill this time.

NOĊTÚ serves to teach us a few things. Uniformity: Bad. Individuality: Good. Negativity and Homophobia: Very bad. Dancing Like You'd Like to Rip The Floor to Shreds, Because, You Know, You Want the World to Stop Gay-Bashing You and Appreciate the Manliness of Step Dancing: A Possible Solution. Okay. I got it.

Now through October 2, Tuesday-Saturday, 8pm with 3pm matinees on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Limited seating.

Tickets or call 212-727-2737

The Irish Repertory Theatre
132 West 22nd Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

Characters not straight enough?

YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters
by Alison Flood, guardian.co.uk, September 14, 2011

New York nonprofit dance examined

The State of New York Nonprofit Dance
by holbart, The State of Dance in the Union, Septembr 14, 2011

Tales of Japan's indigenous Ainu

Ralph Lee 

presents

THE OLD BOAT GODDESS - SONGS OF THE AINU

 

Friday-Sunday, September 16, 17, 18 at 7:30pm

Free

Outdoor Garden 
Cathedral of St. John the Divine

111th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, Manhattan

for weather reports: 212-929-4777

                        "In the outdoor garden of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine,

                          Mettawee River Theatre Company employs Ralph Lee's

                          gorgeous puppets to tell traditional stories about the

                          indigenous Ainu people of Japan."

                                                                 The New Yorker, September 19, 2011

                        "The puppeteer Ralph Lee delves into strange worlds, both

                          physical and metaphysical, in his inspired productions."

                                                          The New York Times, September 9, 2011

Renowned puppet and mask maker Ralph Lee presents his Mettawee River Theatre Company in the New York premiere of  The Old Boat Goddess - Songs of the Ainu, three entertaining traditional tales from the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan.  A company of actor/singers handle the superb giant figures, puppets and masks to tell these adventurous tales of interactions between humans, gods and the natural world.

More information

A conversation: dance and consciousness

Movement Research's
Studies Project series
presents

Dance and Consciousness

A conversation among choreographers, philosophers and performers on the nature of consciousness and how dance as an artistic practice acts as experiential research into this fundamentally human yet indeterminate and far-ranging territory. In addition to gathering different perspectives on the subject, some questions will be considered: How does dance affect current philosophical thinking on consciousness? How do choreographers and performers engage with theory on the subject? How have personal experiences and artistic practices contributed to private and collective understanding and development of consciousness? How can these experiences enter into broader discourse on the subject?

Participants in this conversation include Alva Noë (philosopher and author of Out of Our Heads), Michelle Boulé (dance artist), Miguel Gutierrez (choreographer), RoseAnne Spradlin (choreographer), and others. Conceived of and moderated by Vanessa Justice. Thanks to Gibney Dance Center for the donation of space.

Free. Reservations not necessary.

Thursday, October 6, 6pm 

Gibney Dance Center
890 Broadway, 5th Floor, Studio 4
(between 20th and 21st Streets, Manhattan)
 
Movement Research

The new Cowles Center's Sonntag

Interview: Frank L. Sonntag (Executive Director of the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, Minneapolis)
by Zachary Whittenburg, TimeOut Chicago, September 7, 2011

Pina Bausch in 3-D

Wim Wenders reinvents 3-D in epic dance film
by Greg Quill, thestar.com, September 9, 2011

Dance makes NYC $$$

Dance makes economic impact
Study: The art contributes $215 million annually to city economy.
by Miriam Kreinin Souccar, Crain's NewYorkBusiness.com, September 11, 2011

Zahava: Exploring the shamanic way of dance

Zahava

Dance as Shamanic Ceremony:
A New Offering to the Dance Community

 

from Zahava

The most curious, loving, and courageously adventurous dancers are starting to gather at the free Intros to Dance as Shamanic Ceremony.  We start by what we are most passionate to explore in the next phase of our dancing.

I felt very disconnected from my trained body, within a dance culture that valued me for things that were not related to my soul.  My metabolism, my body structure, my willingness to follow instructions through fatigue, my willingness to compete, all gave me mobility in the ballet culture. I found myself in this culture because it was one of the few options for me as a young white American girl who wanted to dance!  I have watched the impact of this culture on my body, in my friends (many of whom have stopped dancing but have not completely healed their relationship to dance), and in the current generation of professional dancers.  This is a crucial time for transformation on the Earth and it’s showing up everywhere, including the dance world.

I remember wondering how I could love something so much, rehearse hours each day, and yet see that when the audience showed up to the performance they could not connect with us.  The new course that I am offering explores dance as a source of deep connection.  I remember how awkward my dancer friends and I used to be improvising in clubs.  It’s intimidating to move how you feel in the absence of choreography when you don’t know how you feel.  The course includes feeling our soul instincts and expressing them fully through improv. 

I remember how many of us lost our menstrual cycles as young women because we did not have the body fat to support a baby.  The course gives us the opportunity to become profoundly present to the needs and desires of our body, as our primary intuitive instrument.  The pleasure we can create in our dance sets a pretty high bar for the pleasure we create in our sexuality, our career, our homes, our spirituality, our families, and our community.

I'm offering this, not only to heal the relationship individual dancers have with dance.  It is also to create more trust, wholeness, and love, in the culture of dance training as a reflection of the values we want to live by in our society.  We can train our bodies to do so much in addition to triple pirouettes and ponches.  We can train our bodies to be the perfect instruments for our souls and to transform what is not LOVE.  Forgiveness and compassion start in the body.

Standing still has become a tremendous experience with the growing awareness of the energy system in my body and it’s relationship to the Earth, in partnership, tribe, and ancestry.  Dancing from this full place is the most enlivening, grounding, pleasurable, and purposeful way of being in “here.” 

Shamanic Ceremony is speaking an intention in a charged space such that it’s possibility becomes real to the speaker, the community present, and the universe.  Dance as Shamanic Ceremony is moving our soul inside our body with an intention and we become in that moment who we need to be for the intention to manifest in the physical world.

If you are a professional dancer or have intensively studied a dance form for the past 5 years, this class will meet you at your growing edge as a mover. Experience with improv and contact improv will enhance your journey. If you have a meditation practice, study energy awareness, are on a shamanic or tantric path, then this is your class! Come meet your tribe. All genders are welcome.

Wednesdays, 6pm-7:30 pm
Sept 21, 2011 to April 25, 2012

The Red Bean Studios

320 West 37th Street, 7th Floor

between 8th and 9th Avenues, Manhattan

For more information, click here.

Register here by Wednesday, September 14.

Contact: Zahava@LoveMakingDances.com

Reverend Mr. Mom

With The Homophobes, A Clown Show--running now at Dixon Place--Argentine-born playwright Susana Cook takes cartoonish aim in the general direction of Christian fundamentalism. Her blows might not land with clear impact, but this one-act play is an often amusing, ultimately comforting sermon to the progressive choir.

In this satirical what-if story, a charismatic and very married preacher dumbfounds his cult-like flock when it turns out he's pregnant. And not just pregnant--as wild a situation as that would be--but, he claims, impregnated by the same miraculous method that produced his Savior, Jesus, Son of God. Complications--and homophobic outrage--ensue.

Clearly Cook's attitude towards the Christian right is: If you insist on being ridiculous, be prepared to be ridiculed. Cook doesn't just paint with a thick brush; she tosses the brush aside entirely and grabs big spray cans in both fists. The preacher's congregation all sport ugly blond wigs, impossibly dowdy clothes and mooncalf expressions of devotion. As these creepy believers drift towards individual members of the audience, one's natural impulse is to flee the theater.

It's all a little shrill at first until the belly-distended, morning-sickness-challenged Reverend Fred (the wonderful Robert Saietta) comes to fully embrace his new role in life and faces the wrath of his followers. Something else starts seeping in, mainly through Saietta's attentive, ultimately sympathetic performance, that introduces tenderness. Regie Cabico, in either blonde, lipsticked drag as a true believer or skimpy angelic feathers as God's seriously under-dressed messenger, also consistently strikes effective notes along a range from silly to sly to sensitive. Cook's eventual emergence and interaction with her nine actors have something of a grounding effect--poetic and dazzling, too, underneath her studiously rumpled appearance.

With direction, original music and live musical performance by Julián J. Mesri 

The Homophobes continues at Dixon Place on Fridays and Saturdays through September 24 at 7:30pm.

Tickets

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street (between Rivington and Delancey Streets), Manhattan
(map and directions)

Choreographer Laura Shapiro observes 9/11

Choreographer Laura Shapiro just sent in this note of invitation:

Dear All,

Dance New Amsterdam is having a Day of Remembrance and Reflection for the dance community on September 11, 2011. DVD of the performance of Clear Skies, Sun Shining, a piece for five dancers that premiered on September 11, 2009, will be screened there.

I am grateful to Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Tatyana Kot-Diaz, Ingrid Kullberg-Bendz, Trayer Run-kowzun and Mari Sakahara, the performers who journeyed with me in the creation of the piece as well as to cellist Madeleine Shapiro (no relation) through whom I found Matthew Burtner's Fragments from Cold (for cello and electronics), a recording of which became the sound score for the piece (with Shapiro on cello); and to NYFA for providing me with a Special Opportunity Grant to support the performance of the piece.

Wishing you a peaceful weekend,
Laura

Dance New Amsterdam
280 Broadway, 2nd Floor (entrance on Chambers Street), Manhattan
212-625-8369 or info@dnadance.org
(map and directions)

Gish Prize for Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown Wins Gish Prize
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, September 7, 2011

Swanning around at Juilliard

Choreographer Henning Rübsam of SENSEDANCE offers to tell you everything you always wanted to know about Swan Lake but--particularly after seeing Black Swan--were afraid to ask!

Rübsam promises "a deeper and more detailed examination and discussion of this particular masterwork" in his 10-week, Thursday evening course at the Juilliard School.

To learn more and to register, click here.

Wonder remains: Kraus at Merce Fair

A Fair for Merce
by Lisa Kraus, Writing My Dancing Life, August 30, 2011

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives: a conference

Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives

Barnard Center for Research on Women presents a conference on the effects of catastrophe on cities, their inhabitants, and the larger world, and how we can address the politics of terror with which states react to their vulnerability.

Friday-Saturday, October 14-15

Miller Theater and Wood Auditorium, Columbia University

This conference, convened ten years after September 11, 2001, aims to explore the effects of catastrophe and to imagine more life-affirming modes of redress and reinvention. In a series of presentations and conversations, an international group of artists, writers, and activists will imagine creative responses to disaster and initiate a new collective memory of the events of September 11.

Speakers include Ariella Azoulay, Nina Bernstein, Hazel Carby, Teddy Cruz, Ann Jones, Dinh Q. Lê, Shirin Neshat, Walid Raad, Saskia Sassen, Karen Till, Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman, and narrators from the September 11, 2001 Oral History Project at Columbia. Co-sponsored with the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University.

To register, click here.

Also notable from BCRW this fall...

Five courses on culture and creativity, including:
 
Storytelling Life (Elizabeth Whitney)

Women's Cultures/Women's Lives (Leslie Calman)

Seeking Your Voice: A Poetry Workshop (Patricia Brody & Eva Miodownik Oppenheim)

Multicultural Memoirs: Personal Histories of Family, Politics, and Identity (Lori Rotskoff)

Self/Portraits: Women Artists in Modern America (Lori Rotskoff)

All courses take place in Barnard Center for Research on Women, 101 Barnard Hall. For complete information schedule, fees and registration, call 212-854-2067.

Haunted by Third Rail Projects

Steampunk Haunted House--brought to you by the versatile, imaginative, Bessie Award-winning Third Rail Projects--returns this October at Abrons Arts Center. Get details and view a brief PBS interview with the work's creators here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (corner of Pitt Street), Manhattan
(directions)