More Ado about A Lot

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The Nothing Festival, curated by Tere O'Connor and presented by Dance Theater Workshop, has got legs. The two-week series (featuring nine choreographers, if you count Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder, the two women known as HIJACK as individuals) continues to do exactly what it was designed to do--stir up community discussion about conditions faced by postmodern dance artists under our current funding system, mainly, the problem of being forced to declare your artistic intentions well before you have any idea what those intentions are. That some of that discussion has become defensive and heated cannot stand in the way of the enormous value of this dialogue.

I attended the first week of the festival, which included works by Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim and Dean Moss. The second week featured pieces by Luciana Achugar, Walter Dundervill, Jon Kinzel and Susan Rethorst. I regret that preparation for my vacation prevented me from catching this week's presentations, but I did have the benefit of hearing all of the choreographers at O'Connor's afternoon panel discussion on April 21.

The three-hour discussion, including audience input, flew by like one hour. I could easily have heard more. As I listened to each choreographer, I got a clear sense of how each one had perceived and translated O'Connor's invitation to make a piece that--without the preconceived, sometimes artificial notions that funder's grant applications require--would simply be allowed to grow on its own and find its own form and meaning. Achugar spoke about the personal challenge of not making something overtly political in order to go into the studio and simply see where exploration of movement might lead her. The idea of "movement locating meaning"--I think O'Connor said this, but my scrawly notes don't tell the tale--appealed to me. Dunn told us that he'd originally fallen for dance because "it didn't relate to anything else I knew in the world." O'Connor referred to movement as "its own language," not a representation of anything, and he repeatedly mentioned the cultural myopia of Western concepts of artmaking (as well as criticism). Rethorst spoke of approaching dancemaking "without a sense of control."

I found myself nodding in accord with many of these assertions, which echo many of my experiences in poetry, meditation, psychic work, teaching and--yes, Tere--even the observation of dance. O'Connor--who once suggested that critics should put their notebooks and pens away and just watch--might be amused to know that I sometimes do that, either literally or figuratively, but that with the whimsical state of my memory, it might work out better for dancers if I made an effort to scratch out a note or two.

So you see, I take all of this very, very seriously--but with liberal dashes of humor and love, with one foot in the world of the artist and the other in the world of the watcher--and, in listening to O'Connor's colleagues speak quite well for themselves and without his rancor, I find more commonality here than conflict or the need for conflict.

O'Connor opened the panel by mentioning Roslyn Sulcas's negative review of the festival's first week in The New York Times--a review fairly similar to my own brief commentary on this blog (April 19). Although the panel discussion was not intended to be forum about the failures of dance journalism in New York, O'Connor chose to go there. He has consistently complained about the state of dance criticism, apparently because he feels that any critical opinion rendered about a dance is an attempt to seal it and its maker in amber.

When dancers say that dance criticism isn't all that it should be, I have to agree. Some of it is indeed disengaged, careless, dull and discouraging to the reader. Overall, dance writing is not yet as sensitive, imaginative, probing or liberating as it could be--a situation that, I believe and hope, will begin to change as more dance writers turn away from the commercial gatekeepers of print media and find empowerment through the Internet and other forms of technology. But one significant job will remain for critics: to engage with the art and render an informed description, interpretation, assessment and appreciation. Critics have a responsibility not only to artists like the ones who made work for The Nothing Festival--who represent one sector of an aesthetically and intellectually diverse art form--but also to people who enjoy dance or could be enticed to do so.

Could we, as critics, approach dance from the point of view of point zero--beginner's mind, as Buddhists would say? Yes. I know it can be done because, at times, I've practiced it. But ultimately we are sitting in front of something presented not as an open-ended, ongoing process but as a distinct phenomenon located in time and space and with a title and--let's get real--a price tag attached to it. We come around to the moment when we must articulate what it is we've just experienced, how it sits with our sensibilities, what has shifted within us, what all of that means to us and what measure of value this might have for anyone about to sacrifice time and hand over cash to witness it. Let's be blunt and call it consumer advocacy. In this capitalist system that dancer-choreographer DD Dorvillier, speaking from the panel's audience, reminded us that we labor under, it's a necessary part of the picture. And verbal language--with its strengths and its limitations--is the tool critics use to build a useful bridge from the dance to the public. Perhaps that bridge can also move energies and information in both directions.

At the panel, I riffed a bit on Susan Rethorst's comment about dance artists staying inside a circle or two of people who "get it." (Forgive me, Susan, for possibly mangling this paraphrase of what you said so clearly, but you see what can happen in the absence of note-taking...) I said that I was very familiar with the power of circles from my past work in creating rituals and workshops of all kinds. A circle format can create safe, protected and egalitarian space--but circles can also become windowless enclosures that shut out the very nourishing or even irritating elements that we need for growth and development. Inside that closed circle, we can hear finally ourselves think, yes, but maybe we hear only ourselves and those most like us--which reminds me all too much of the current, so-called leadership of the United States of America. The last person in this society I'd hope to see shutting himself or herself away in a protective cocoon of the like-minded would be an artist. Interaction beyond our comfort zones is the only way we'll get things to change.

I also speak as a woman of color and...wait, you don't really need me to do the whole Audre Lorde enumeration, do you? Let's just say I know from inside circles, outside circles and way distant circles. O'Connor spoke about cultural myopia. When I look around at a lot of dance concerts, I can't help but notice who's not in attendance (let alone who's not on stage and who's not writing about dance). Circles can get mighty small and, pretty soon, we're only bouncing ideas off a handful of people.

Not to jump too much on Rethort's remarks about circles, but they provided a point of entry for me as a student of and worker in symbols, a particular invitation into the discussion and, for that reason, I consider her words a precious phenomenon.

Doug Fox (of the Great Dance blog) didn't care for anything from The Nothing Festival's first program. He has asked me to elaborate on my favorable remarks about States and Resemblance, the work-in-progress created and performed by Dean Moss, Ryutaro Mishima and Restu Kusumaningrum during the festival's initial week.

States and Resemblance gripped me and had me on the edge of my seat largely because something tangible--a quiet, refined something--emerged from whatever nothing these collaborators took as their starting point. Moss--who sat at one far end of O'Connor's panel and, for some reason, spoke very seldom--said that "We are meaning machines: Put something out and we will make a story of it." As I watched Moss's subtle, slyly casual interaction with Mishima in States and Resemblance, I found myself forming and releasing a round of stories and meanings, happily birthing but not clinging to any, and this experience was brought to me by two artists in exquisite command of their physical and expressive powers. This work welcomed me in and made me a participant in a way that the other three simply did not. I say it again: Seeing this one dance again is all I want to do right now.

Well, maybe not all I want to do right now. Right now I want to get out of New York and go gaze upon the Grand Canyon. I want to continue to think about what nothingness could mean to a critic and why I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the (imposed and self-imposed) parameters of my own dance writing and my role. I want to spend some time in beginner's mind and learn something from the spirits of the land.

I also hope to come home and see my Yankees win a few games for a change.

(c)2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Stephen Petronio Company at the Joyce Theater

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

As one of Stephen Petronio’s dances concluded, a woman in the audience pierced the silence with a flute-like “Oooo!” Who could have said it better? This company gives great pleasure, and one appropriate response to its full-out way with music is with a little music of one’s own.

For the current season--a sampler of new, revived and previewed works–top marks go to Michael Badger who opens Without You II (the world premiere) with a warped, rubbery, tortuous solo in which body parts sometimes seem to want to twist off or fly away, with every major muscle group responding to different musical time signatures, some lazy, some driven. A sensationally flexible performer, Badger has a body is acutely attuned to the smart way Petronio plays within a rhythm and subverts expectations just as, with assuredness and without much fanfare, he subverts our expectations around gender.

Elena Demyanenko, another of the strangely appealing odd ducks who dance so thrillingly for Petronio, partners Badger well in the latter part of Without You II, but he’d almost be better off...ahem...without her. Their entwining duet stretches on a bit and I missed the focus of Badger’s outrageous solo. Watch for Badger partnering Gino Grenek in the crisp, forceful and exhilarating male duet that opens Bud Suite (2006), set to Rufus Wainwright’s “Oh What A World.”

Petronio also offers a preview of This Is the Story of a Girl in a World, a suite slated to premiere in 2008, set to music by Antony. It features Grenek, Shila Tirabassi and Amanda Wells in "Bird Gurhl" and an engaging solo, "For Today I am a Boy," danced by the spritely, close-cropped Davalois Fearon wearing an ingenious costume that makes her appear to be shedding a man’s jacket like a snake’s skin and revealing the woman within.

"The Ship Song" (a quartet from Underland, created for Sydney Dance Company in 1997) and ReBourne (a pair of simultaneous, overlapping dances set to Beastie Boys songs) round out the company’s season, which concludes on Sunday. For details and tickets, see www.joyce.org.

(c)2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Summer Movement Monastery

DANCEMEDITATION WITH DUNYA

June 17-23

AT THE MILL & MANSION IN PHILMONT, NY

The Summer Movement Monastery offers an extended time in a serene environment to deepen your practices with a community of like-minded people.

Come... breathe, stretch, move, rest, dance, bellydance, chant and whirl without words, with beautiful music, with your eyes open or closed. Enjoy a simple cleansing diet and the spiritual richness of Sufi practice. You'll experience the deep relaxation, abundant creativity, improved immune function, healing and inner peace you've been looking for, and return home with renewed vigor and inspiration.

Dunya Dianne McPherson

Director, Dervish Society of America

DSA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the path of evolutionary Sufism providing development and exploratory inquiry into embodied spirituality and community connection through service, performance and practice opportunities.

http://www.dancemeditation.org

All Eyes On...

Two living studies in the sheer, unadulterated joy of dancing: Rasta Thomas (in Little Rhapsodies) and Harumi Terayama (partnering Charlie Neshyba-Hodges in Love's Stories). Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, April 17-21, NYU Skirball Center.

Much ado about...something

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Curator and artiste provocateur Tere O’Connor has given the City That Always Seems to Need One More Dance Festival a new festival in which choreographers start off with nothing–no concept, no music, no whatever–and come up with...something. (Funny, I thought that was the way it usually worked. In creativity, isn’t there always that moment right before the initial, germinating idea emerges?) This week and next, DTW’s showing The Nothing Festival (www.dtw.org for details and tickets) with work by Douglas Dunn, HIJACK, Sam Kim and Dean Moss (April 18-21) and Luciana Achugar, Walter Dundervill, Jon Kinzel and Susan Rethorst (April 25-28). On Saturday, April 21, DTW will host a panel discussion with O’Connor and the choreographers (1-4pm).

Opening night’s lineup included:

–the interminable but harmless and attractively danced Zorn’s Lemma, in which Dunn makes like a senescent, disoriented speedskater surrounded by fairies wearing wonderful Mimi Gross costumes,

–Colin Rusch and Angelina Jolie, in which the Minneapolis duo Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder (aka HIJACK), two clever, technically-gifted women who regularly subvert all of that, get a lot of mileage out of and put a lot of mileage into a very different form of social studies class,

--Sam Kim’s Cult, a tedious duet for the choreographer and her collaborator Justine Lynch in which these two–check out that hair, those scary fake nails–appear to be having the sleep-over party from hell, and

–States and Resemblance, a work-in-progress (collaborators/performers: Dean Moss, Ryutaro Mishima and Restu Kusumaningrum) that is such an accomplished, elegant piece of art at this point that you have to ask what the heck more they think they need to do to it. Yeah. Seeing this one dance again is all I want to do right now.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Palissimo/Pavel Zustiak in “Le Petit Mort”

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I missed my first chance to see Le Petit Mort (Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye) when director- choreographer Pavel Zustiak premiered it at P.S. 122 last December and so did many other New Yorkers. Shortly into Palissimo/Pavel Zustiak’s run, after dancer Ellen Cremer suffered a mishap and Saar Harari severely injured his knee, the remaining performances were cancelled. Now this striking ensemble dance about demise has returned to P.S. 122 for a brief run that--heaven willing--will conclude as planned: no sooner than tomorrow afternoon.

Le Petit Mort begins with a disturbing sonic rush that suddenly drops away to dead silence. If sound had a physical body, this opening would feel like someone big and clammy slamming into your chest then veering away as you stagger and gasp.

Harari stands at one side of the space, his back plastered against the theater’s wall, his hands raised high as if the sudden grey wash of dim light has caught him in the midst of a holdup or arrest. He repeatedly slips down towards the floor but isn’t completely in the throes of death. That dark lump at his feet is the body of a woman, and his jerky pelvic gyrations suggests that there’s some life left in his crotch and in hers. The French, after all, call orgasm “le petit mort.”

For the next hour or so, we survey an unsavory, weirdly enigmatic landscape. Benjamin Asriel, Gina Bashour, Marýa Wethers, Cremer, Harari and Zustiak–costumed in funereal colors and wearing smudged, smoky eye makeup to make their expressionless faces look even deader--propel themselves to the floor and into each other in ways in which human beings, not being made of rubber, were never meant to do. They dash around the space, making rough contact, engaging in careless, sometimes ominous handling of one another. That tight, prolonged embrace of a partner’s back and neck looks like an attempt to kill him.

A masterfully executed passage finds the dancers trading among themselves the role of slumping corpse--caught, lifted and swiftly, bouyantly ported about to the music’s hysterical lilt. In one perverse scene, Asriel–the corpse of the moment--gets propped up, decorated with a party hat and surrounded by his peers for a series of group photos.

Like Zustiak’s fascinating if unsettling choreography, Joe Lavasseur’s expert lighting feels eerily dry and cold, given to either unrelieved murk or something starkly clinical and exposing. A silky curtain topped by flourescent light bulbs (set by Nick Vaughan) receives the projection of hazy video images in which only one repeated moment–a scene of people running towards the camera–can be identified with any certainty. Sometimes one or another dancer will drop or be dragged and splay out behind the curtain, feet thrust forward into view like the Wicked Witch felled by her wind-tossed house.

A door to backstage stands ajar like something out of a dream about to go bad. You don’t want to walk through it or see what might emerge. And besides, there’s already enough strangeness in plain view, like Asriel blowing on Harari’s big toe as if to inflate him and then morphing into a lizard that writhes its massive tail as Harari strides beside it.

Zustiak’s abundant, surrealist imagery gets able support from his thoroughly engaged dancers, particularly Harari, who is one hell of a creepy, nauseating shape-shifter (meant as the highest compliment).

I had a rather odd experience towards the end of Zustiak’s hour. I felt as if something tugged me back from Zustiak’s hypnotic scenario and I (sort of) heard: “Society’s collapsing, deteriorating.” Then Asriel, pants dropped to the floor, lip-synced a countertenor’s voice, and Le Petit Mort screeched to a halt in the blink of lights and the sickening crackle of a short circuit.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Max Pollak and RumbaTap in “Viis”

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

You know the drill: Someone welcomes us, introduces the show, points out emergency exits and reminds us to stifle our cellphones. But I heard a new twist at Max Pollak’s Joyce SoHo gig: “No text messaging and no receiving of text messages during the performance.” Text messaging? Is there anyone left who still pays attention to the show?

Luckily there was not a single outbreak of high technology at RumbaTap’s performance of Viis, but the evening-length dramatic work, created by Pollak in collaboration with dancer Chikako Iwahori, could have benefitted from clearer correspondence--and I don’t mean email.

I came to Viis with some misgivings about its prospects; unfortunately, those feelings were not dispelled. Inspired by Pollak’s visit to Finland, Viis is set in an undefined place where the Santeria orishas of Cuba and Nordic characters from the ancient Kalevala epic are one and the same and sometimes find themselves tap dancing to jazz. But the Finnish characters and storyline get lost in performance, and the cursory explanation in the program notes don’t help us find them.

This conceptually ambitious gambit rides on Pollak’s world-class reputation. For years he’s been rightly lauded for soulful, seamless integration of tap dance with Afro-Cuban rhythms and chant, and for the extravagant way he gives his entire body over to the music, his dancing and the ground. He is truly a master performer who commands our attention in this work as in others.

In Viis, his hearty crew of musicians--Paul Carlon (tenor sax/flute), Andy Milne (keyboards), Dimitri Moderbacher (baritone sax, flute, clarinet), Alby Roblejo (percussion), Gottfried Stoger (alto sax, flute) and Ileana Santamaria (vocals)–arrive in full force, packing the expected pleasures. There are bright spots in the dancing: in particular, effervescent Lynn Schwab perfectly cast as the flirtatious, self-pleasuring Oshun/Louhi’s daughter character and DeWitt Fleming, Jr. as Oggun/Ilmarinen cutting loose in a tap challenge number with Pollak.

Instead of casting longtime dance partner and collaborator Iwahori as the angry, forbidding witch/Oya character, Pollak could have challenged her to loosen up her stony demeanor and body, and tune up those inexpressive feet. I keep wanting to see more of Iwahori than we usually do, hoping that it’s there.

Near the end, Pollak makes an attempt to render the Finnish aspects of the story more palpable, but by then it’s too late and too cartoonish. This work argues for separation of powers–tap over here, folklore over there–a shame because Pollak’s motivation was a longing for unity among diverse cultures, among all people. Unity is a fine goal, but first let us all be clear about who we are. Identity comes first.

Click here to visit RumbaTap.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Clare Byrne’s "To The Tree"

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

On April 5th, the International Students Caucus of Union Theological Seminary hosted an unorthodox Holy Thursday service in its James Chapel. It was led by seminarian Claudio Carvalhaes and performed by Clare Byrne, a dance artist noted for her bold choreographic signature and experimental engagement with religious ritual. The forty-minute event drew a modest congregation of sorts, seated in a large circle around the focus of Byrne’s endeavor–a plain, rough-hewn wooden cross, thirteen-feet high.

Carvalhaes introduced Byrne’s dance, To The Tree, by reminding us that our habits and preconceived ideas can restrict our view of reality. If we free ourselves of these notions, “reality might turn itself upside down,” he said. “And this chapel, perhaps it is only a chapel, but perhaps it is capable of being other things, too.” The cross, Christianity’s most-exalted symbol, might be an anchor, he suggested. “Or a tree, or a hollow space filled with both the holy and the mundane.”

To The Tree evoked both Christianity’s cross of Jesus--the cross of sacrifice--and the pre-Christian, ancient and universal cross of opposites, a kind of schematic altar where worlds of matter and spirit intersect. The image of a tree has resonance for pagans and Kabbalists, too, and the wondrous hollow space, of which Carvalhaes spoke, is an important feature of numerous mystic and mythic traditions.

But what was most clear was Byrne’s guileless claiming of the cross for herself. With a long, wooden pole balanced across her shoulders, the petite, sinewy dancer approached the cross, regarding it for a lengthy moment, then simply made it her home. Over the next half-hour or so, she closely engaged with it, softly running her hands along the wood, embracing it, twirling before it like a dervish, running the pole through a hole in its vertical beam–an image that oddly conflated the piercing of Jesus’s flesh, an act of sexual intercourse, and the cleaning out of one’s pockets. The advancing pole noisily displaced a cache of coins and other items, including the plastic shards of a broken lipstick case.

With a congregant’s assist, Byrne climbed to the top of the cross and stretched out atop the crossbeam like a sleepy cat, perfectly comfortable. After more calm, simple maneuvers, she returned to the floor with no further help needed.

This cross, she seemed to say, it’s all good. I have loved it and healed it.

Her dance reminded me of something a metaphysical teacher said recently: that places that have seen great violence are like bodies in need of healing. I could offer examples, but they are legion; you could name them just as well.

After Byrne exited the chapel, Carvalhaes invited us to join together in singing a Christian hymn, write a few words about our experience of the dance and tape these slips of paper to the cross. As I circled the cross, I was surprised to see that a number of people had expressed feelings of anxiety. I wondered: Could it have been the physical risk? Byrne--very carefully, I thought–had swirled the pole near us, like a priest swinging incense smoke above our heads, as she moved in and out of our circle. Was it the way she scrambled to the height of the cross and balanced there? Or did something else trigger dis-ease and apprehension?

To The Tree made me feel anything but anxious. I felt the healing.

Byrne’s spring project continues with an evening performance of Letter to the Church at UTS’s Lampman Chapel on the evening of April 23rd and Kneelings in numerous locations around the city from April 22nd through May 6th. Visit www.clarebyrnedance.org.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Conduits of the Light

Today, I invite you to read Conduits of the Light, a beautiful essay by spiritual healer and teacher Rory Pinto, on my main Web site.

Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company at Town Hall

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Listening to master guitarist Paco Peña in A Compas! last Friday evening felt like time-traveling back into a clear, sheltered space within the turbulent heart of medieval Spain. Peña’s warm, supple and bewitching performance--accompanied by fellow guitarists Paco Arriaga and Rafael Montilla and percussionist Nacho Lopez--provided the only true soul in this one-night-only appearance at Town Hall by the Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company. Singer Miguel Ortega contributed respectable work, but Inmaculada Rivero’s voice seemed both underpowered and ill-served by the hall’s sound system.

Angel Muñoz, Charo Espino and Ramón Martinez--all skilled and fervent dancers–seemed content to play to the sensibilities of the Broadway-style suburbanites who took the bait and roared approval of every punched-up flourish, hot glance and insinuating grin.

The youthful, handsome and personable Muñoz and Martinez know how to work a crowd. They essentially tell you what you should want and reward you when you clamor for it, thereby anchoring that desire and guaranteeing that you will call for their hustle again and again. They leave no room for any other desire.

I cannot deny the exceptional command of the shape of their dancing and the electrifying speed of their footwork. But Muñoz’s cute-as-a-button mugging and Martinez’s unshaded, wild man act–both overdone, overly self-conscious strategies–failed to move me.

Espino is a queenly swan of a dancer relying too heavily on the sculpting and sometimes off-putting hyper-extension of her upper back, shoulders and arms to make a dramatic impression.

I wanted to see and feel something of the inner reaches of flamenco dance–the unforced stuff, the soul’s genuine, unpredictable response to the music and the twists and turns of life that you can’t miss when Noche Flamenco’s Soledad Barrio, for example, takes the stage.

Running at 2-1/2 hours (including intermission), A Compas! was also a bit of an endurance test. Since Peña clearly had the audience from hello, there was scarcely a need to underscore, double-underscore and triple-underscore the dancers’ glamour. Next time, why not shave off some of that calculated, silly excess?

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Macaulay's Debut

by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Over the past month of so, I’ve heard and read a number of opinions about the New York Times’s selection of Londoner Alastair Macaulay as its new chief dance critic in the wake of John Rockwell’s retirement. Leaving all that noise aside for now, I’m feeling somewhat hopeful after reading Macaulay’s first big Arts & Leisure piece yesterday.

Macaulay’s reminiscence on beloved Romeo and Juliet performances is the kind of personal sharing–a real human being with feelings and responses writing about dancers as real human beings with feelings and responses--that just might inspire America’s vast legion of non-dance fans to check out a ballet or two, or more.

Not to put any heavy duty pressure on the man in his new job, but if he keeps this up, I‘ll have to continue reading him.

The true test will be how he handles the spectrum of dance in our town, beyond big ballet and the best-known modern dance troupes. The chief dance critic of the New York Times ought to be hip to the full, dizzying array of what we have on offer here. That’s not to say that he has to like it all, but the Times shouldn’t leave “lesser stuff” to those freelancing--what did Rockwell call them?–girls.

Yes, Macaulay is a male and a Brit, and not being either of those things, I certainly rooted for one of New York’s homegrown women writers to get the big, influential job at The Paper of Record. But if Macaulay can vividly remind me–with my leanings towards postmodern and world dance–of the thrill I found in ballet decades ago, maybe he really is the right hire for our Times and our times.

(c)2007, Eva Yaa Asantewaa