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Friday, November 29, 2013

Tap--and a dancer's quest--explored in "Tap or Die"


"Tap is always 'coming back.' When's it going to get here?"
--Derick K. Grant

"There are a lot of our critics who would like to keep it on the corner. 
They'd like to keep it as folk art."
--Brenda Bufalino

"We've had too many people who we consider heroes die broke."
--Derick K. Grant

On Friday, January 31, meet filmmaker Jackie Paré at the 2014 Dance on Camera festival screening of Tap or Die, an hour-long documentary inspired by Boston-born tap artist Derick K. Grant and his still-unfulfilled mission to bring his celebrated 2006 show, Imagine Tap!, to Broadway.

Warm, vivacious and chock-full of interviews with numerous dance artists and experts, as well as vintage and contemporary performance footage, Tap or Die addresses both the undeniable triumphs and ongoing controversies within the tap dance field. It also makes a lot of fundamental insider stuff accessible and appealing to a broad audience--for instance, how the various parts of tap shoes are used to vary sound and how math is an essential part of the tap equation.

For more information on this screening and the full schedule for the Dance on Camera festival (January 31-February 4), click here.

Tap or Die 
(2013; 62 minutes)

Presented by 

Friday, January 31 (3:30pm)

Walter Reade Theater
Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street (near Broadway), Manhattan

Dance on Camera tickets go on sale:
December 10: Pre-sale for DFA and FSLC Members
December 17: General Public
Purchase tickets on FilmLinc.com

A photo archive of the Palestinian experience

Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored
by Isabel Kershner, The New York Times, November 28, 2013

Saul Leiter, 89

Saul Leiter, Photographer Who Captured New York’s Palette, Dies at 89
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, November 27, 2013

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Artists, realize your abundance!

New York Live Arts' Associate Artist Program, OurGoods and Brooklyn Commune Project team up for the next in a series of free events on Operating From a Place of Abundance: Community Asset Mapping, and you're invited.
How do we operate from a place of abundance rather than scarcity? Can we utilize the skills, strengths, and resources that already exist in our communities to bolster and support each other’s work? Could this process of exchange lead to a more vibrant cultural ecology, the realization of each other’s intrinsic and expansive value, and strategies that result in everyone ending up with more than they started with?
Working in small groups, we will each name a challenge we are working on, discover what resources exist within the room to meet that challenge, and then brainstorm additional resources outside the room. As we do so we will visualize all of these resources, creating a map of abundance within our community.
Tuesday, December 17
6:30-8:30pm

(Can't make it? The next one will convene on Wednesday, January 22.)

FREE! All are welcome! (RSVP here)

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

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Chico Hamilton, 92

Chico Hamilton, a California Cool Jazzman, Dies at 92
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, November 26, 2013

Chicago to host first US contemporary circus festival


The 2014 Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival (January 6-12) promises "five days of workshops [curated by the up-and-coming Circus Now organization], four days of full-length contemporary circus shows, and two late-night cabaret style performances, with the intent of creating a new and educated audience for circus in America."

If this sounds like your kind of Winterfest, click here for complete details.

Also, for information on Speaking Circus Chicago, a seminar for Chicago-area arts journalists (January 7), click here.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Sting, Estelle Parsons and Michael Feingold celebrate with La MaMa

Sting and a Non-Selfie Crowd
Taking a Shot at the Guests at La MaMa's Annual Benefit
by Lizzie Simon, The Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2013

Jazz artist Esperanza Spalding calls for action on Guantanamo

Esperanza Spalding
Esperanza Spalding
(photo by Johann Sauty)
Esperanza Spalding: Guantanamo Doesn't Represent 'Our America'
by TELL ME MORE STAFF, NPR, November 22, 2013

Megan Kendzior calls us to "Witness"

Scenes from Witness by Megan Kendzior
Top photo by Crystal Edwards
Bottom photo by Victoria Sendra
Choreographer Megan Kendzior will present a new, full-length version of her ensemble work Witness, a Danspace Project commission, December 19-21. Although inspired by her visit to Auschwitz, Witness has broad and ongoing relevance. Kendzior considers it her form of protest against indifference. Its title can serve both as a noun and a command, a call to empathy and responsibility.

I began this piece in 2009 after I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, and it has had many different incarnations. For this commission by Danspace Project, I created a new work under the same name.
It's a form of research that involves specific first-hand accounts of Holocaust experiences that we then translate through our bodies and our voices to provide an embodied historical depiction through the memory of one woman, referencing trauma in her past. She summons these other beings into the space.
I'm questioning the role of the spectator. With full respect and honor to victims of genocide and trauma, I want to continue to tell stories that challenge our current behaviors. I'm asking you to watch what's hard to watch and to go through it.

Witness will be performed at 8pm, Thursday-Saturday, December 19-21. On Friday, December 20, Kendzior plans to offer an afternoon performance of a shortened version including some of her young students from Harlem and a talk with one of the very few Latvian survivors of the Holocaust. For complete information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (corner Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Novelist James McBride on winning his National Book Award

Traveling With John Brown Along the Road to Literary Celebrity
James McBride on His Novel ‘The Good Lord Bird’
by Julie Bosman, The New York Times, November 24, 2013

Graffiti artists decry the whitewashing of New York

As Legal Graffiti Walls Disappear, Street Artists Ponder Future
by David Gonzalez, The New York Times, November 24, 2013

Budget problems threaten Pittsburgh's August Wilson Center

Pittsburgh Center Honoring Playwright Finds Itself Short on Visitors and Donors
by Trip Gabriel, The New York Times, November 23, 2013

Contemporary African art museum planned for Cape Town

New Cape Town Museum to Focus on Contemporary African Art
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, November 24, 2013

Sunday, November 24, 2013

American dance history in photos: Smithsonian's "Dancing the Dream"

open now through July 13, 2014
Dancing the Dream tells the stories of performers, choreographers, and impresarios who harnessed America’s diversity and dynamism into dance styles that defined the national experience: dance was American culture in motion. From the era of live performance to today’s media age, dance’s “singular sensations” have riveted our attention—iconic figures with signature styles that leap into the starscape and strike us with wonder.
Admission: Free

Learn more here.
Visitors info here.

Wanda Coleman, 67

Wanda Coleman
by Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times, November 23, 2013
During four decades as a force on the L.A. poetry scene, Coleman produced works that compelled attention to racism and hatred.
(Read more.) 



Saturday, November 23, 2013

"Our Planet": a new Japan Society commission

Jenny Seastone Stern ("Luna") in Our Planet
(photo by Julie Lemberger)
You get dizzy, you get dazzled, you get giddy.
--from Yukio Shiba's Our Planet

For each performance of Our Planet, audiences--each thirty people only--hike all over Japan Society's midtown East landmark building for ninety minutes. They stand and perch in public and private spaces amid music and startling animated projections as they follow the long (really, really long), developing relationship between two playful neighbor kids. Okay, what if I were to tell you that those kids are Earth (Terri) and the moon (Luna); that neighborhood, the cosmos; and that relationship a matter of life (all life) and death (of stars and pretty much everything)? Intrigued yet? You should be.

The powerful actor Julian Rozzell, Jr., who eventually plays the female Terri in a skirt wrapped around his pants, first greets the audience in the darkened lobby, dramatically backlit by the light of an open elevator. On his lips, Yukio Shiba's text zips past you in bursts of forceful and mercurial dazzle--catch and hold what you can--setting up your understanding of the birth of a universe that will teem with the massive and the microscopic, and of a planet that will host all human experience, thought, speech and feelings.

Like a Pied Piper, Terri takes her charges on a journey, integrating them into each new environment, also placing little tea light "stars" here and there, even in the little pools of the lovely indoor water gardens. Eventually, Terri leads her followers upstairs to encounter Luna, embodied by Jenny Seastone Stern, where begins an initially shy and then fervent friendship, one faithful even through distance, time and time's inevitable changes. Our relationship with the convincingly girlish Luna--and with the innards of Japan Society's home--also grows. You might even find yourself seated to tea at a family table where Luna speaks the entire communal dialogue. Stern brings vulnerability and lightheartedness to her role, drawing something of the same from Rozzell, Jr. Well matched, they are.

All in all, you can't help but get a little dizzy, a little dazzled, a little giddy. Happily, there are guides all around to help you watch your step.


Direction: Alec Duffy (Hoi Polloi)
Scenic design: Mimi Lien
Costumes: Becky Lasky
Lighting design: Jiyoun Chang
Music composition and sound design: Tei Blow
Motion graphics: Nobuyuki Hanabusa

No late entry. Be prepared to stand, walk up and down stairs and, at times, sit on little cushions or benches. You're encouraged to leave your coats and belongings at the coat check. I'd recommend keeping a light sweater with you: The building is fairly cool.

Running time: 90 minutes

Through December 8 (various dates/times). Due to audience-size limitations, a number of performances are already sold out. Click here for complete schedule details and ticketing.

333 East 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), Manhattan

Updating the Yakshagana dance drama of India

A Karnataka Dance Moves With Modern Times
by Kavitha Rao, The New York Times, November 22, 2013

Friday, November 22, 2013

Sage Cowles, dancer/philanthropist, 88

Sage Cowles, civic activist and arts patron, dies at 88
by Graydon RoyceStarTribune, November 21, 2013
Sage Cowles, a former dancer who matured as a key Twin Cities philanthropist, died Thursday. Cowles, 88, advocated for the arts and the value of physical development in education. She and her late husband, John Jr., supported the Guthrie Theater, Walker Art Center and the local dance community — which named its annual awards program after her. (read more)

Considerably more: two portraits of Carrie Mae Weems

Artist Carrie Mae Weems Talks Race, Gender, and Finally Getting the Recognition She Deserves
by Michael J. Agovino, ELLE, November 20, 2013

And here's more:

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Unpacking Proust: Dead Centre's "Souvenir"

All photos: Bush Moukarzel in Souvenir
courtesy of Dead Centre
Have you managed to make your way through the seven volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu? Oh, no worries. Go to Abrons Arts Center tonight, tomorrow night or Saturday night. Writer-actor Bush Moukarzel, of Ireland's Dead Centre troupe, will unpack just enough Proust for you in a theater space strewn with numerous moving boxes--labeled "Seagulls, samovars, etc.," "Red Death," "Apologies" and, of course, "Madeleines," and the like--amid a shower of pages from a disintegrating book. And he will do so in a mere 56 minutes.

Although somewhat farblonjet at the start of Souvenir, Moukarzel's lovelorn, treadmill-running character--called Bush and, therefore, I suppose, himself--snaps into sentimental, comic or furious focus whenever selected boxes call up narratives on love, time, memory and the like. A blackboard bearing the single item on his to-do list--To Do: 1) Make The Show--gives you some idea of how loose things are and can get with Proust's prose sharing time-space continuum with the likes of 50 Shades of Grey, Beyoncé, a Springsteen classic accompanied on harmonium, and an experiment in constructed memory via boxes of Viewmasters. It all feels deeply haphazard, which leaves room for any number of daffy surprises. Mourkarzel comes off as a right sort to have a beer with; indeed, his affable rapport with the audience opens our way into Souvenir and never lets us get lost in his helpless clutter.

directed by Ben Kidd, with music by Adam Welsh and set by Florence McHugh

Souvenir runs through November 23 with performances at 8pm. Click here for information and tickets.

Abrons Arts Center (Experimental Theater)
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Let's talk about TAP, baby!

American Tap Dance Foundation welcomes you to a special roundtable/think tank moderated by Jane Penn (Director of Development, Studio Museum in Harlem) 

American Tap Dance Center
Friday, November 22 (7:30pm)

A lively, candid and dynamic laboratory for tap dancers, students, historians, teachers, presenters, choreographers and audience members to meet and "TALK" about Audiences! Who is our audience? What do they need? Where can we find tomorrows audience today? Dance studios, commercial projects, on-line? What currently drives the ticket-buyer? and does that need to change and/or grow? Snacks and refreshments will be served.
All photos: Cartier Williams at Tap It Out!
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Admission: $5 in advance by calling 646-230-9564 or at the door
FREE to ATDF members!

American Tap Dance Foundation
154 Christopher Street #2B (near Washington Street), Manhattan

Coming soon from Movement Research: Le Song, Ya?!


Like Christmas, signs of the annual Movement Research Festival--this year, entitled Le Song, Ya?!--are already in the wind. To see what curators Adrienne Truscott and Jibz Cameron (of Dynasty Handbag fame) have in store for the much-anticipated, reportedly lasagna-like festival week, click here.

Tuesday, December 3, should prove to be a particularly amazing day. It includes:

EXORCISE CLASS--facilitated by the aforementioned curators--"A hyper-aerobic, sweaty, instructional,conceptual dance party designed to work out you psychic fat blockage and tone up supersensory abz. While living your spandex dreams and looking real." (11am-1pm at Danspace Project; $10)

WE CAME TO THIS CITY TO SHIT ON A STAGE--"How do we make, define, notice 'transgressive' art in a city whose identity, economy and landscape are increasingly manicured, welcoming, mainstream, highly visible and inaccessible?" (6pm at Gibney Dance Center; FREE)

Also recommended:

PERFORMING VULNERABILITY--"What does it mean to be vulnerable in performance? Is vulnerability a state or can it be 'done?'" Panel moderated by Adrienne Truscott. Panelists include: niv Acosta, Ben Asriel, Hilary Clark, Miguel Gutierrez and Juliana May (6pm at Jimmy's No. 43, 43 East 7th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, East Village, back room; FREE) 

Movement Research

Submit your poetry for the Walt Whitman First Book Award

Rae Armantrout
photo by Rosanne Olson

Walt Whitman First Book Award Deadline: December 1

Submit your manuscript today.
The Walt Whitman Award brings first-book publication, a cash prize of $5,000, and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center to an American who has never before published a book of poetry. The Academy also purchases thousands of copies of the book for distribution to our members, and promotes the winning poet on Poets.org and in American Poet.

This year's judge is Pulitzer Prize- winning poet Rae Armantrout
Past winners of the prize include April Bernard, Nicole Cooley, Suji Kwock Kim, Alberto Rios, and Matt Rasmussen, whose 2012 Walt Whitman Award winning manuscript, Black Aperture, is a finalist for this year's National Book Award.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Making it funky: Rhythmic Circus in "Feet Don't Fail Me Now"

When you're Dancin' with the circus
No cloud in the sky can get ya
--from "Singin' in the Rain" in Feet Don't Fail Me Now!

Watch this year-old promo video (below) from Rhythmic Circus--not an actual circus, but an award-winning tap dance and music ensemble--and imagine everything you see and hear in this video now, one year later, cranked up in cleverness and intensity to a great degree. That ought to give you some idea of what's happening in Times Square at The New Victory Theater where the Minneapolis-based troupe has installed its masterpiece, Feet Don't Fail Me Now!, now through December 1.

I'm assuming you want to be entertained, because Rhythmic Circus is wildly entertaining in the very best blue-eyed-soul way (and I have no idea what color their eyes are, and I don't care). Hot dancing, hot music--you want brassy salsa? hard-pumping Southern rock? funk? R&B? beatbox?--they're selling it, if you're willing to be sold to, and if you aren't, don't buy. Good. That leaves plenty for the rest of us.


How did Ricci Milan (dancer/artistic director) and Nick Bowman (dancer/executive director) manage to pack so much content and value into a single hour? Don't know, but the set list gives these performers a chance to show off their amazing versatility. Not just really good tap dancing, but exciting dancing, period. And Aaron "Heatbox" Heaton's devilish ability to mimic nearly any musical instrument. And that band, Root City, rocking the house with a lead whose voice...well, forgive me, but I can only say it like this: Close your eyes and tell me if this isn't a brother singing...and gorgeously.

Here's more from 2012.


The New Victory curates its programs with families in mind, but you don't have to be a kid--or a parent with kids in tow--to get into this production. Just go, and when the Rhythm Circus crew invites you to get up off your chair and dance, just say, "Feet don't fail me now!"

Dancers: Ricci Milan, Nick Bowman, Galen HigginsKaleena Miller with Michael Keefe
Root City musicians: Alex Rossi (guitar, vocals), Aaron "Heatbox" Heaton (vocals, percussion), Cornell Blanchard (keys, vocals), Patrick Nelson (drums, tuba, vocals), Dan Ristrom (bass, vocals), Peter Vircks (saxophone), Aaron Wiener (trumpet).
Sound/Audio: Miles Hanson
Lighting: Mark Ruark

Feet Don't Fail Me Now! runs through December 1. For complete schedule and ticketing information, click here.

The New Victory Theater
209 West 42nd Street, Times Square, Manhattan

Trio of poets to present "The Poetry of Survival" at CUNY


On Wednesday, November 20, poets Antoinette Bennett, Vaseah Dupree and Melinda Goodman will present the first in a series of mixed-media theater programs dedicated to survivors of physical, mental and psychic violence and for those who are close to them or care for them. This event is free (with RSVP) and open to the public.

The Poetry of Survival
November 20 (7pm–9pm)

Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Depression, anger, shame, and hatred are some of the issues that many survivors have to deal with on a daily basis. It takes hard work not to be consumed with fear, flashbacks, and ingrained patterns of self-destruction. Additionally, some of us struggle with HIV, AIDS, addiction, and other physical and mental illnesses while trying to support ourselves and our dependents on very limited economic resources.
Ultimately, it’s not enough to just "survive" our childhoods. In fact, in order to really survive we need to thrive. Thriving means finding the flame inside ourselves and each other that makes us glad to be alive. The combined story of survival that these poets are bringing to the table is an inspiring celebration of life through written and spoken word in a multi-media theater presentation.
Writer Bios

Antoinette Bennett is a writer, artist, cancer survivor and PWA whose work is informed by the depth of her spiritual foundation. As a survivor of incest and the child pornography industry, Antoinette’s long journey has involved many years of crack addiction during which she lived in the tunnels of New York City and gave birth to eleven children. She has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences throughout the country and she is only three credits short of her MFA from The School of Visual Arts.

Vaseah Dupree is a spoken word artist and creative writer who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn during the height of the drug wars and the AIDS/HIV epidemic. She is a survivor of Urban America, sexual, physical, verbal and domestic abuse. While struggling to cope with the affects of the environment in which she grew up, Vaseah received her Associates Degree from BMCC and she plans on continuing her education.

Melinda Goodman is a poet, writer, and producer who has taught at Hunter College since 1987. She is a recipient of awards and/or fellowships from the Astraea Foundation, Columbia University, and New York Foundation on the Arts.

For your FREE ticket, please RSVP here.

For information, click here
or on The Poetry of Survival's Facebook event page here.

Segal Theatre
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets), Manhattan

Friday, November 15, 2013

Gina Gibney premieres "Dividing Line"

Dividing_Line_FRONT_wTYPE
Two Gibney dancers: Amy Miller (l) and Natsuki Arai
(photo by Julieta Cervantes)

In the dance world, we're now so used to thinking of Gina Gibney as the force behind the Union Square's bustling, multi-studio Gibney Dance Center, that it's possible to forget how carefully she tends her own art. Dividing Line--her first new piece in a few years, now at Florence Gould Hall--serves as a reminder of her appetite for making. Her long-running collaboration with two distinguished artists--composer Son Lux (aka Ryan Lott) and lighting designer Kathy Kaufmann--continues to be intuitive and fruitful. And Gibney Dance, her evolving ensemble--now a sextet with equal numbers of women and men--renders her formal ideas with discipline and stamina.

Dividing Line, therefore, makes its mark. With this hour-plus work, Gibney roars back onto her stage, and her claim and ferver are best represented by one dancer in particular--Amy Miller. To acknowledge Miller as soloist, duet partner or the fire-starter within any group moment is not to deny anyone else's contribution to the work. Instead, I want to recognize Miller now for embodying the place towards which Gibney Dance is heading.
Amy Miller
(photo courtesy of Amy Miller)

The line initially established at the front of the stage by all six dancers (Natsuki Arai, Javier Baca, Jake Bone, Zachary Leigh Denison, Jennifer McQuiston Lott and Miller), and re-established at work's end, tells us to pay attention. Something special and heightened will happen here in the space between two clear marks in time. And it does. The line gives way to a space churning with the transformative energy of wind, water and human pulse. Son Lux's string quartet, performed live by the thrilling American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), contains lots and lots of lines that divide like blades swooshing and slashing through air. Gibney and her dancers, with precision of form and timing, meet the composer and his musicians edge for edge.




None edgier than Miller, though. When this dancer moves, she's positively multidimensional, her effort and her boyish pixy persona making the eccentricities of the movement pop. That's what Gibney needs and may one day lead her team to achieve: dancing that brings out the mix of confidence, strangeness and rigor in her aesthetic.

With costumes by David C. Woolard

American Contemporary Music Ensemble includes artistic director Clarice Jensen (cello), Caleb Burhans (viola, substituting for Caitlin Lynch on opening night), Ben Russell (violin) and Caroline Shaw (violin).

Dividing Line continues tonight and tomorrow evening with performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Florence Gould Hall
French Institute Alliance Française
55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Bobbie Handman, 85

Bobbie Handman, a Medal of Arts Winner, Dies at 85
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, November 14, 2013

Thursday, November 14, 2013

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire


Thursday, November 21, 7pm

Nora Chipaumire
after winning 2008 Bessie Award for Choreography
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn Studio
Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn studio, 2012.
Image courtesy of Wangechi Mutu
Photo: Kathryn Parker Almanas
Join artist Wangechi Mutu and dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire as they meet at the intersection of visual art and performance. 

moderated by Performa’s Adrienne Edwards

presented in conjunction with the Performa 13 biennial

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

Will Rawls: Shuttling between "downtown" and Serbia

Dance artist Will Rawls
In 2008, I went to the Balkans for the first time and, in some ways, never came back. It was also the summer that Obama was running for president.
The Planet-Eaters is a choreographic investigation of folklore to encounter ourselves as different kinds of performers who are neither here nor there, neither expert nor amateur, both singular and plural, both ancient and new.
--Will Rawls, excerpts from program notes for The Planet-Eaters
In the exceptionally elegant body of American dancer Will Rawls, the folkloric dance rhythms and rituals of the Balkans reveal a lush complexity. Rawls and his musical collaborator, Chris Kuklis, duet in The Planet-Eaters: the dancer entering the realm of music via a twisty, vocalized system of counting beats and his pulled-up posture and lighter-than-air trotting, prancing, pivoting; the musician sharing physical space and elaborate movement and even aggressively manipulating props. Both men go where they "don't belong," and they do so heartfully and beautifully.

With the few audience rows forming a broad crescent curved around one long side of The Chocolate Factory's performance space, and the dancers getting particularly rambunctious in the latter part of the work, you might say there's even community involvement in all this. Come expecting a solo dance turn by a star of the "downtown" arts scene--a strange expectation here, since folk dancing is a communal kind of thang--and you actually become part of a highly textured fabric of witness and support. And then there's the matter of your own feet and the way an eventually sweaty, panting, slip-sliding Rawls might ram right into them. And Kuklis? At one point, he flaps and thrashes a huge patch of Astroturf in your general direction. It gets to be a hot mess up in there--especially when everything takes a turn into a cross between house culture and Old Europe shamanism--assisted by Saša Kovacevic's fanciful costuming--in a suddenly darkened space. About the only weak link is Rawl's lengthy spoken word passage in the middle of the show; the narrative is intriguing, but his voice could use more oomph.

with lighting by Bessie Award winner, Madeline Best

The Planet-Eaters continues through Saturday evening: SOLD OUT. For complete information on this program, click here.

For information on future presentations at The Chocolate Factory, including Jon Kinzel's Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man (December 4-7), click here.

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

Robert Plant on Mali and the gift of music

Robert Plant Produces a Documentary Series About Malian Music
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, November 14, 2013

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Join Danspace Project's Twitter party on arts activism, volunteerism


Lydia Bell
of Danspace Project and Jason Maas of The Artist Volunteer Center will discuss the state of arts activism post-Hurricane Sandy via Twitter this Friday, November 15 from 4-5pm. 

Join the conversation by directing questions and thoughts to @DanspaceProject and @TheAVCenter using the hashtag #precariousart.

For information on Danspace Project's Performing the Precarious: Cut Piece program, click here.

Join LMCC on Monday for a truly ***stellar*** night

Leonids via NASA
Leonid meteors (photo: NASA)

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

invites you to

Milk Ways’ Meteorological Night Bath

Moira Williams with Mary Mattingly

November 18 (11pm-2am)

Pier 42 
along the East River between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges (map/directions)
A meteor during the peak of the 2009 Leonid meteor shower
Photo: Navicore via Wikimedia Commons
Join us at Pier 42 on the night of the Leonid meteor shower for stargazing, star charts, projections, music and more, with storytelling astrologer Margaret McMahon and astronomer Barry Gloger. Organized by Milk Way admirer, Moira Williams, in conjunction with Mary Mattingly's installation Triple Island, as part of Paths to Pier 42.
For more information, please visit Paths to Pier 42.

"Check Your Body At The Door" and download this doc!

Check Your Body At The Door (2012)
now available for digital download



Available in six languages and in over 20 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Italy and Australia
Check Your Body at the Door documents some remarkable underground House dancers and dancing in NYC’s golden decade, the 1990s. Featuring interviews and rare dance footage of the enduring legends of House dance, Check Your Body at the Door follows a group of master freestylists to the clubs, at their jobs and in their everyday lives. Filmed at the clubs, and in a studio against a white background or in silhouette and light pools, this one-hour documentary reveals the virtuosity of this eclectic urban dance style. In 2013, House is a music/dance craze practiced worldwide. Check Your Body at the Door is a significant historical record that contextualizes a wide variety of House dance forms and answers: What did house dancing look like? Who were the dancers? Why did they dance?
According to Executive Producer Sally R. Sommer the idea for Check Your Body at the Door began in 1982 at David Mancuso’s “Loft” where she first went with dancer Archie Burnett. As a dance journalist and social dance historian Sommer saw “amazing artists dancing in the dark.” At the time, club footage only glamorized torsos bouncing to loud music under multicolored lights. “I saw more. I wanted a film that featured dancers and illuminated the entire body in motion.”
Full Territory List: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ireland, Malta, Bulgaria, Latvia, Norway, Cyprus, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Hungary, Portugal, Poland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Estonia

Dance artist Michelle Boulé offers free presentation on BodyTalk, Saturday

Michelle Boulé
Dancer-choreographer Michelle Boulé will give a free introduction to the BodyTalk system, offer a demo session and explain how BodyTalk is customized to each individual.  

Saturday, November 16 (11am-1pm)


36 West 44th Street, Suite 1212 (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan

Susana Cook brings her "Caligula" to Joe's Pub

Joe's Pub 
presents

Susana Cook's

WE ARE CALIGULA
A show about Cruelty and Pleasure

November 19, 9:30pm
Susana Cook (photo by Lorie Novak)
Legendary downtown theatre auteur Susana Cook brings back Caligula, the meanest man in history, in this delightfully witty and savagely funny play. Caligula, the cruel and brutal man who thinks he's God, is dissected, lampooned and spliced with the everyday acts of normalized cruelty that people do in the name of entertainment, pleasure and protein - and because they taste good. There will be comedy, savagery and even an orgy or two - all to a musical score by Julian Mesri.

“Cook’s style is to employ chitchat and push it to extremes of absurdity. She’s really good at it.” -EDGE New York, New York
“With an entertaining blend of show tunes, massacres, and orgies, “We Are Caligula” explores just how our species justifies war, and racism, and homophobia, and all the other stuff that ends in us devouring each other (and animals) without a second thought.” -Gay City News
Info/Tickets

Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette (between Astor Place and West 4th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Paintings of Merce Cunningham troupe will go on exhibition



presents

KENNETH E. PARRIS III:
104 Work Weeks: On Tour With The Merce Cunningham Dance Company 
Artist Kenneth E. Parris III, was on tour with members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for two years documenting their world tour through a series of drawings. Parris focuses on what happens on the road before and after performances providing an intimate glimpse into the lives of dancers and a more universal revelation of the human condition.
Opening Reception: Wednesday, November 20, 6-8pm

Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-6pm and by appointment


254 Broome Street (between Orchard and Ludlow Streets), Manhattan

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Remarkable Nile Rodgers

Nile Rodgers at Lincoln Center Out of Doors
Summer 2012
(photo by Darial Sneed)
Nile Rodgers
by Dimitri Ehrlich, Interview, November 2013

Toshi Reagon reflects on "Naked Soul" at the Rubin

As a follow-up to my post on the Naked Soul concert by Toshi Reagon and Juliette Jones at The Rubin Museum (read it here), I got permission from Reagon to share her beautiful notes from Facebook on her image and music selections and her overall experience at the Rubin.

She writes:

I had a heart opening experience at the Rubin Museum of Art. It was a thrill to sing in the a beautiful rosewood room with excellent acoustics. I am so used to creating dynamics with my voice and a microphone- it was a work out to sing off mic a whole show. I loved it. I worked with violinist Juliette Jones who jumped into every song with a soulful and sensitive creativity. Fierce! I was deeply moved by the good folks who decided to spend the time and money to be at that show. There was no loud sound to cover fidgeting, drinks, or small conversation. We all had to be really present. It was something else. This audience felt like they knew each other well, and sang so beautifully together. I am always humbled to see really old things survive in the 21st century. I as myself what will we leave for our people hundreds of years from now. Looking back could help us move forward in a brighter light.
Durga Mahishasuramadini
10th century
Tan Sandstone
I used usually 2 or 3 songs to cover the energy I felt from the pictures. I picked "Mountain top" for Maya because she gave birth to Buddha- she has a connection to life- and makes trees. She gave birth standing up- and she gave birth to someones who mission was known. So he is born grown. "Mountain top" is a rebirth song and the idea of standing on the mountain and standing down on the mountain made me think of this idea of being bigger than a mountain or grand enough to be there. So it is the idea of releasing power into the world and being powerful yourself that connected them.

I picked "Terrify Me" and "I hate I love" for Durga because they are both about having to deal with and vanquish problems you did not cause. They are both about a manipulative power structure that would never empower you to to be an equal creating chaos that you have to win in order for all to survive.

I picked "dream" for Rahula because it is the song about an end of life and everlasting life on the other side of death - it ends then we die no more. A guide is moving along side the person that is moving towards death- does not push or pressure but walks along side. Eventually the person finds death and welcomes by crossing the jordan river. How ever they are not gone from the ever. Rahula could be guiding us to a death and another life.

In good voice: Black women speak up, sing out

Melissa Harris-Perry
(photo: MSNBC/Heidi Gutman)
Yesterday, the stars aligned. And how!

In mid-afternoon, scholar, author and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry sat down at The New School for a provocative conversation with scholar and author bell hooks. In the evening, singer-musician Toshi Reagon took to the stage at the Rubin Museum of Art with violinist/fiddler Juliette Jones for an acoustic concert of songs organized around images from the Rubin's collection of Himalayan art. Without question, November 8, 2013 was a Power Day in New York City.

bell hooks
If you missed the (poorly announced) free ticket distribution for the New School event, you could watch via Livestream (complicated sign-up, especially at the last minute, but not impossible). Social media exploded right before, during and after with expressions of frustration (What??? I didn't know you needed TICKETS to get in!!!) and increasing awe as hooks and Harris-Perry addressed, all too briefly, numerous issues, each of which could have launched a thick dissertation. From divergent perspectives on recent Black-themed films (12 Years A Slave, Django, The Butler) to sexual violence against Black women to the relative privilege of having light skin when working in corporate media, hooks and Harris-Perry showed a willingness to take space, give voice and honestly grapple with difficult questions. And difficult people: Ironically, perhaps inevitably, one man chose to waste limited Q&A time by delivering a lecture then shouting over hooks' attempt at a reply. It's useful, though--isn't it?-- whenever a fool helps you prove your point about the arrogance of patriarchy.

Both women invoked the late congresswoman/presidential candidate Shirley Chisolm of Bajan heritage (her slogan: "Unbought and Unbossed") as a role model and, accordingly, spent the ninety-minute session breaking every possible code of silence. I was most amazed by--and even concerned for--Harris-Perry who displayed an outspokenness about her role at MSNBC and a degree of personal vulnerability that I would not have anticipated. I felt hooks--twenty years the broadcaster's senior, as she made sure to note at the beginning of their talk--prodding and then leading Harris-Perry into deep waters but making sure to surround her with loving support. Just breathtaking.

Watch the archived conversation
 on Livestream here.
http://hulshofschmidt.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/toshireagon1.jpg
Toshi Reagon
(photo: Erica Beckman)

Introducing Toshi Reagon at the Rubin, Tim McHenry (Director of Public Programs and Performance) wondered aloud what had taken him so long to invite her. So now that that oversight has been rectified, I'm sure it won't take long to bring her back. McHenry's sold-out audience was not only appreciative but clearly smitten.

The Rubin challenges singer-songwriters in their Naked Soul acoustic concert series to peruse the collection and select three images to build a set list around. Reagon--who looks much like a delighted Buddha herself--clearly enjoyed her opportunity to learn about the legends of Himalayan deities and demons and recognized, in them, a way to talk about her ongoing concerns around social and environmental justice. The connection of her specific song lyrics to the sacred themes wasn't always obvious, but the delicate interplay of her high-flying voice, her bluesy guitar and Juliette Jones's sinuous fiddle work made their own sense and had grounded, and grounding, spirituality--always welcome. Her ease with the audience and her sense of humor were winning. Someday ask Reagon to tell you the story of the warrior goddess, Durga--one of her image choices. The Rubin really ought to hire her as a docent.

******

Future Naked Soul evenings will include appearances by Mary Gauthier (January 3), Susan Werner (Febuary 14), David Wilcox (March 14) and Shelby Lynne (May 30). For information and ticketing, click here.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Jack Mitchell, photographer, 88 [UPDATE]

Iconic photographer Jack Mitchell dies at 88
by Richard Conn, News-Journalonline.com, November

Jack Mitchell, Photographer of the Arts, Dies at 88by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, November 9, 2013

La MaMa's Puppet Series opens with "The Orphan Circus"

Quebec's Les Sage Fous troupe opened La MaMa's latest Puppet Series with a curious number called The Orphan Circus, directed by South Miller.
Monsieur P. T. Issimo, mysterious circus impresario
(photo by Cinthia Chouinard)


We begin this hour in the company of two rough-looking customers--actor/puppeteers Jacob Brindamour and Olivia Faye Lathuillière--who creep around a dark alley filled with corrugated gates, trash barrels, old oil cans and other debris. After our initial impulse to hug our belongings closer, we watch the pair go about recycling trash--"orphaned objects"--into treasure, asserting the siren-like beauty in a discarded, ratty-looking doll, training a fish skeleton to be a champion acrobat, and more.
Brindamour (l) and Lathuillière with friend(photo by Theo Cote)
Christian Laflamme's score, in its pleasantly jazzy way, belies the grim surroundings and the grotesque appearance of the puppets and says "New Age Magic Act." I got the point--see loveliness and wonder everywhere and anything is possible!--but never warmed up to these puppet characters or to the slight work itself. Perhaps something more meaningful and effective could have been done with the perfunctory contact between puppets and audience (first row only).

Brindamour and Lathuillière very skillfully control their puppets via little black sticks and strings, the dim lighting and our cooperative minds rendering those maneuvers nearly invisible. Yet the grand transformation these puppeteers seek to achieve is more announced than convincingly displayed.

The Orphan Circus repeats tonight and Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm. The La MaMa Puppet Series runs through November 24, including a curated "puppet slam" on Friday, November 15 at 7pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theatre)
74A East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan

A whole 'nother kind of pre-op: Watch this!

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Mindy Aloff celebrates the dance writing of Edwin Denby



NBCC Reads: Mindy Aloff Picks Edwin Denby
by Mindy Aloff
Critical Mass (National Book Critics Circle), November 6, 2013

Maria Hassabi premieres "PREMIERE" at The Kitchen

Choreographer Maria Hassabi (far left) with members of her troupe--
l-r, Robert Steijn, Andros Zins-Browne, Biba Bell and Hristoula Harakas
(photo by Marialena Marouda)
From Hassabi's PREMIERE
(photo by Paula Court)
The publicist wasn't kidding when he wrote, "The artist and The Kitchen would like for me to remind you that there is absolutely no late seating for this show, so please plan accordingly to be here before 8:00."

As soon as you pass through the set of doors into the performance space for Maria Hassabi's PREMIERE (co-presented by The Kitchen and Performa for Performa 13), you're trapped. With the action--yes, I will use that word--unfolding in front of you, the five performers arrayed between you and those doors, there's no unobtrusive way to get up and walk out. And, any number of times, you might think about walking out, think about fleeing the tedium and the cumulative heat of countless stage lights massed on either side of the performance space. The dancers' movements are incredibly slow and slight; the temperature in the airless room, elevated; and you are uncomfortably aware of everything going on within your own body.

Over ninety straight minutes that feel like ninety minutes indeed, you tilt forward, backward into your seat, list to one side or the other. Your eyes droop. You fan yourself with your program. You hear your neighbors similarly shifting, rustling, coughing. You catch one checking her watch. You check your own watch.

And yet you stay put. Not because you are a Performa type, because maybe you're not. Not because you're self-conscious and/or polite. But because the work--an endurance trial for performers and audience alike--is a knockout.

From Hassabi's PREMIERE
(photo by Paula Court)
You first experience PREMIERE as you enter the space, noticing the dancers rooted in place--Biba Bell and Hristoula Harakas standing, Hassabi, Robert Steijn and Andros Zins-Browne lounging on the floor--all motionless as they face the theater's doors. They maintain that tableau, inside the blaze of hot lights, with their backs to the audience as it settles in. When the last stragglers enter, Kitchen staff close the doors--the only indicator that the time has come to pay serious attention.

You watch for something--anything--to break loose. You feel relief and triumph to notice even just the flow of breath ruffling through a dancer's back, and you search for more of the same. Your outer and inner senses reach out. Despite yourself, you have already begun to live in this dance.

This persists over a long stretch until Harakas breaks the spell with a teeny, tiny twist of one foot. Bell also makes a minute slide or twist that slightly re-positions her body. In time, Zin-Browne's arm, which has been supporting him on the floor, slips backward an inch or so, and so does both of Hassabi's supporting arms. Glacial pace and subtlety in movement get the job done, though. You can look away for a while and look back to find the grouping changed in significant ways. It not only breathes; it evolves.

"Sound, here," I wrote in my notebook, "is color." I cannot say what I meant in that moment, but, so be it. The sole of Bell's ankle boot makes little crackles as it inches along the floor. In the otherwise silent atmosphere, that reaches us like amplified music. This approach to sounds, created by the friction between surfaces, recurs throughout the piece as dancers adjust their grounding. In one part of the dance, a crinkly sound initially seems to issue from one or more of the lights, like a sudden electrical problem. That distracts you until the volume of the noise strengthens and you get the joke. It's part of a recording as is a soft, high voice that appears somewhere and swiftly disappears.

Late in the piece, the blast of light reduces and then gets restored. Maybe you notice, for the first time, the oval pattern of dusty shoe marks--presumably from the audience, but it looks so perfect--that decorates the floor. Maybe you think, "Who's to stop me from napping for the remaining time? Really, who?" Instead, you continue to watch the dancers work their way 'round to their original tableau in which they face the doors through which you now may exit. In their end is their beginning.

Sound design by Alex Waterman
Lighting design by Zack Tinkelman and Maria Hassabi
Styling by threeASFOUR
Dramaturgy by Scott Lyall

PREMIERE continues at The Kitchen through Saturday evening with performances at 8pm. For schedule and ticketing information, click here.

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

******

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