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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Alessandra Belloni interview on Great Dance Podcast

clipped from greatdance.com
Alessandra Belloni
Visit Great Dance Podcast for my audio interview with dancer-musician Alessandra Belloni who specializes in the healing ritual dances and music of Southern Italy.

If you like what you hear, please leave a comment on the Great Dance Podcast page. I greatly appreciate your support. And remember to subscribe to Great Dance Podcast by clicking on the orange button.

Thanks!
Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Monday, July 30, 2007

Results of "So You Think You Can Dance?" Poll

"So You Think You Can Dance"

builds new audiences for the art of dance.
12 (52%)
increases respect for dance and dancers.
9 (39%)
increases interest in dance training.
9 (39%)
increases interest in dance among mainstream media.
15 (65%)
misrepresents the art of dance.
4 (17%)
is basically harmless.
7 (30%)


Votes: 23
Poll closed as of 7/30/07

The (un)raveling of Dance's Public Discourse

[Editor's Note: For further information about the following announcement, write to submit@itchjournal.org.]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ITCH #6

The (un)raveling of Dance's Public Discourse

Journalism--albeit selective and to some extent limited by the needs of the larger publication that prints the material (including ITCH!)--is an important product of dance culture. It's what is written, dictated, interpreted, and recorded of a dance for the purpose of public consumption. To some extent, it is a dance's second life, its public face.

It's also a tool. For some artists, getting "written about" is as important as having a live audience. (Where else might you get the bodacious "dynamic athleticism!" quote to validate your production packet or grant application?) Still others anticipate having their work acknowledged in contexts that are more scholarly.

While all perspectives are valid, when we look beyond the concerns of our individual work, it is hard to ignore the fact that the vibrancy of the vast dance culture rests, in part, on a certain level of visibility that journalism provides.

But journalism itself is changing. While dance editorial space in the print media has been slipping, the use of electronic media forms like myspace, youtube and blogs have broadened the prospects for those interested in maintaining dance's presence in the public arena. This
change has raised important questions about the accountability of mainstream journalism to represent the performing arts community (especially considering the authority and reach they have within the public sphere) and the necessity of artists to become the reviewer/pre-viewer/moderator/scholar/critic/journalist, etc of their own community.

We Ex*perts

Artists have the capacity to push dance culture forward, in part determined by the manner in which we engage with, add to, respond to, rebut, oppose, and create alternatives to the production of the public discourse surrounding dance. For this issue of itch, we would like to focus on 1.) artist-initiated projects that seek to broaden the public discourse on dance, and 2.) initiate a dialogue concerning the state of dance journalism starting from your direct experiences, thoughts, concerns and observations.

We welcome your submissions in a variety of forms including critical theory, prose, faux-reviews, documentation, brainstorm, line drawing, haiku, interview, self-analysis, fluff, lists, archival material and manifestos.

*Also, for our rolling dialogue section, please submit your responses to issue #5: fiction and fictions

Deadline: Saturday, September 1, 2007

Send submissions, questions, concerns, provocations, etc. to submit@itchjournal.org.

PS: coming soon: itchjournal.org

itch is an evolving art project in the form of a journal that aspires to serve the community of dancers and other artists of the Los Angeles area and beyond. Practice participation in the developing LA dance culture: insert your thoughts, your body, your voice. help itch grow should you be enhanced by it...

Saturday, July 28, 2007

M-Plateau: Koosil-ja's rehearsal space for rent in Williamsburg

[Editor's Note: Please note Koosil-ja's downward revision of her rental rate. She has also decided to name her space M-Plateau.]

An announcement from dancer-choreographer Koosil-ja:

Hello friends,

I am in a process to sign a lease for 1,000 sq ft space at 195 Morgan Avenue, 3rd floor of 3rd Ward. I would have to store 30 TVs and other goods in this space, so the actual space for your use would be 700 sq ft.

I am thinking to rent it out by hour, with the rate of $5. The space will be available starting September. It is 24/7 access.

Let me know if you have any question or are interested to rent. I'd appreciate your support and please spread the word.

Thanks.
koosil-ja

Location: 195 Morgan at the corner of Stagg Street, East Williamsburg, Brooklyn

By subway
  • Take the L line to the Grand Street stop. Head south on Bushwick Avenue (towards the school) one long block and make a left on Stagg Street. 3rd ward is located three blocks down Stagg Street on the corner of Morgan Avenue.
  • We are also easily accessible from the Montrose and Morgan Avenue stops on the L train.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Keeney says "Shake it!"

A busy summer has left me less time than usual for reading--no languorous lounging on the beach! However, one book I gladly made time for was Bradford Keeney's latest: Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement. The well-traveled and rather intense Dr. Keeney--I recall him well from a New York Open Center workshop years ago--combines extensive training in psychotherapy and the shamanism of indigenous cultures. His book details his discovery of the curious ritual practice of physical shaking for healing and transformation of consciousness that is a characteristic of traditions as geographically and culturally diverse as the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Quakers of America.

Keeney has fully embraced this sacred body-based technology known to traditional peoples around the globe, and he has done so with evangelical certainty and glee. This fascinating book can only take you so far. If you're itching to know what's shaking and why, Keeney invites you to try it. You'll find a 40-minute CD of drumming for ecstatic movement tucked inside the back cover. (2007, Destiny Books. ISBN: 1-59477-149-9.)

New DTW director Greco in video interview

Doug Fox, my blogging colleague and friend, has posted an interesting video interview with Stephen Greco, the new executive director of Dance Theater Workshop. Click here for Doug's Great Dance Blog.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

FAR Space Grants from The Field

Field Artist Residencies provide rehearsal and showing space grants to performing artists to develop new pieces, find new ways to generate material, work on collaborative ventures, or anything that would benefit from time and space. Deadline: August 15.

For further information or applications, click here or call 212-691-6969.

In need of a good laugh today?

Aren't we all? Try this. Not dance-related, but what the heck!

Monday, July 23, 2007

A sad dispute in our community

One account and one opinion on disturbing developments in STREB, a dance company that I've greatly enjoyed over the years.

Extreme Action, Extreme Dispute
by Daniel J. Wakin, New York Times (July 23, 2007)

How Elizabeth Streb says Thanks
by Paul Ben-Itzak, The Dance Insider (July 5, 2007)

Daniel J. Wakin's original Times piece about deeAnn Nelson's accident:

A Troupe Known for Daredevil Choreography Copes With a Casualty (June 2, 2007)

So You Think?

Click here to listen to a brief report on the phenomenon that is FOX TV's So You Think You Can Dance, a show that, NPR's host said, brings dance "to people who normally do not watch dance at all." Dance Magazine editor-in-chief Wendy Perron allows that the show gives watchers user-friendly access to dance.

Take the poll above and tell me what you think!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Pam Tanowitz Dance in “Forevermore”


Photo credit:
Pam Tanowitz Dance
"Forevermore"
Pictured: Melissa Toogood and Daniel Madoff
Photo by Steven Schreiber
Pam Tanowitz Dance

review by
Eva Yaa Asantewaa


What a lovely, cool and clear evening for a stroll down to Joyce Soho! I took the East Village streets at my ease, finally arriving at the intersection of Mercer and Houston Streets. But when I glanced across Houston, I noticed a police barricade and lots of people just standing about.

We’d just had that terrifying steam pipe explosion in midtown Manhattan a few days ago. What now?

Silly me! I’d forgotten Harry Potter! The witching hour was approaching, and the Pottermaniac book-buyer line snaked all up and down Mercer Street. I have to say this was the merriest-looking queue of New Yorkers I’ve ever seen, and–being a Hogwarts addict myself, but one quite willing to wait for my next and final fix–I was delighted for them. But I had a job to do, as always: Sitting my butt down in front of dance. Happily, the dance I sat my butt down in front of was as refreshing as my walk and nearly as magical as J. K. Rowling’s imagination.

Pam Tanowitz makes ballet-modern dance hybrids–an effort not unique to her but one that she achieves with uncommon grace and gusto. Balletic movements, performed with affectionate care and not in jest, might look exotic on the modern dance stage, but they are simply as valid as anything else in Tanowitz’s overall scheme. She is a garrulous, multilingual poet of the art of dance, and I’m eager to hear whatever she has to say.

Forevermore, her new four-part ensemble piece, is one of the most handsome productions I’ve seen at Joyce Soho in recent memory, and every element of it just seems right. For some reason I can’t explain, I was immediately, oddly cheered to notice the low barrier with which set designer Philip Trevino separated dancers from their perhaps all-too-close watchers. (Dancers step over this boundary to enter and exit and, eventually, two of them temporarily crush it beneath their supine bodies.) I liked the understated midnight elegance of Kathy Kemp’s costumes and the subtle moods of Julie Ana Dobo’s soft, cool-tinted lighting. I savored the wildflower bouquet of music: Henry Cowell’s mournful Ensemble for Strings, a jangly old Cheap Trick hit, and the chiming, thrumming picketty-pocketty-pock of Dan Siegler’s Light bulb Variation 1 and Light bulbs All Along. Everything held the four sections of counterintuitive movement in a firm embrace.

Guest artist Posy Knight led the way in “Forevermore Solo” with her springy turns and off-kilter stances and transitions. In “The Shades,” Daniel Madoff eventually merged with a trio of women by creeping backwards while holding a strained, precarious balance. The moves unfurled, stretched and glowed within a pristine physical environment and tense atmosphere.

The dancers could be seen whole; in their abstract movements, they resembled insects illumined and magnified as if under a lens. We examined details that were repeated and slowed or speeded for our inspection. In “Forevermore Duet,” when Madoff’s rested his hand on Melissa Toogood’s waist and she deftly snapped that hand into place, she delivered an unforgettable byte of data about their relationship.

The ballet-ness of Forevermore is represented in far more than the occasional clickety-clack of pink pointe shoes on the Joyce Soho floor or even the inclusion of classical port de bras or footwork. It’s in the clarity of movement–a clarity nevertheless affording room for release and expression by an admirable corps of dancers.

Forevermore ends tonight. If last evening was any indication, tickets will be hard to come by, by, but you can try calling 212-334-7479. To visit Pam Tanowitz Dance online, click here.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Writing on Dance deadline extended

Please note new application deadline: Monday, July 23
----------------------------------------------------------

Writing on Dance
with Eva Yaa Asantewaa
Tuesdays, 5:30pm - 7:30pm, September 4 – October 9
at Dance Theater Workshop

By application only
Fee: $110 Dance Theater Workshop members / $130 non-members

Description: As a participant in this writing salon guided by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, of the InfiniteBody dance blog, you will share supportive space for deepening your engagement with dance and performance. You will discover ways to enhance your perception, receptivity and empathy so that your dialogue with the art witnessed will become in itself a gift of art. While developing confidence in your ability to describe and evaluate what you have seen, you will also find the courage to redefine writing about dance and performance as a personal act of human response with room for questioning, passion, humor, anger, wisdom and transformation. All are welcome, experienced and prospective arts journalists as well as anyone interested in exploring the power of dance and writing.

To apply, submit a one-page letter (350 word maximum) via email to Richert Schnorr (richert@dtw.org) by July 23, 2007 detailing why you want to take this course. Please place the letter in the body of the email and include all of your contact information.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Already Fully Grown and Waiting

"What people are looking for is not...spiritual growth (your soul is already fully grown and waiting for you to notice it)."

Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. in Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement (2007, Destiny Books)

Sensual Alchemy with Dunya

Dunya presents

Sensual Alchemy: Spiritual Bellydance: Kripalu, August 17-19 (866-200-5203)

Sensual Alchemy: Spiritual Bellydance
: New York City, October 1-November 5

Fall Intensive: New York City, November 8-12

Delirium: Dervish Dancemeditation: Boston, December 1

Pleasure. Joy. Rejuvenation. Peace.

Make Haste Slowly

Times critic Claudia La Rocco has some interesting observations on Slow Dancing, David Michalek's video installation on the facade of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, running now through July 29. I think I understand now why I haven't yet felt the urge to make haste to see this literally high-profile phenomenon. Click here.

Turning Japanese

Artistic Director Yoko Shioya discusses Japan Society's fall season and city-wide centennial celebration ("Turning Japanese"), the origins and meaning of butoh, and more on Great Dance Podcast -- hosted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa and produced by Doug Fox.

That's it. Right there. That's my heart.

Do you ever wonder why I love dance so much?

A friend sent me a link to this video, described on YouTube as "a celebration & tribute to black dance," edited by Pierre Bennu with music by the awesome Imani Uzuri ("Sun Moon Child").

Monday, July 9, 2007

Podcast interview with tap superstars Ayodele Casel and Jason Samuels-Smith

What a thrill to have tap superstars Ayodele Casel and Jason Samuels Smith as my first interviewees on Great Dance Podcast, the new series produced by Great Dance blogger Doug Fox! Their openness, generosity and exuberance made our half-hour just fly by, and I know you'll sense the passion and serious dedication they bring to their craft. Check them out at Tony Waag's great Tap City festival, running this week, Wednesday through Saturday at the Duke on 42nd Street. For a schedule of programs and ticketing details, click here. And don't forget to subscribe to Great Dance Podcast!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Moving-Static-Moving Figures: The Legendary Nevelson

Make time this summer to see The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing A Legend at The Jewish Museum, now through September 16.

Vigorous motion within static form; textures smooth and rough; objects found and constructed, natural and woman-made; open enclosures and recessed shelters; formidably massive and intimately inviting; matte color, gleaming and shaded; verticality and voluptuous curvature; severity and whimsy; repetition and singularity; rhythmic and arrhythmic; black, white, antique gold, transparent. All of it suggesting the body. So much dancing in this body of work!

I cherished my time with it.

"...moving through the third dimension to the fourth and beyond...through matter to spirit." -- Louise Nevelson

Haruki Murakami: Jazz Messenger

As a young dance critic, I used to write to the boisterous rhythms of rock. Nowadays, I must have silence and concentration! :-D But I was pleasantly reminded of my past when I read novelist Haruki Murakami's wonderful essay in today's New York Times about how jazz music spurred him to write fiction and how its rhythms inform his writing. Click here for "Jazz Messenger."

Scherr and readers take on Times critic Macaulay

Apollinaire Scherr and her Foot in Mouth blog readers take up the issue of Alastair Macaulay, chief dance critic of The New York Times: Click here.

Tune your "i" to these beats

Canyella's Podcast

iTunes description:

"Sending out whirrly vibes hoping to make people happy and want to dance and hug each other (or at least hug each other). Latin (a big umbrella including new and old world), Rumba and Flamenco in particular, gypsy/gitano/tzigane...another big umbrella....but also current dancefloor trends that keep some organic african/latin ritmo going. "

Try the Hip Drop-Belly Beats episode (6/21/2007)

http://canyella.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml


Radio Bastet: Vintage Belly Dance Music


iTunes description:

"Listen to the best of "old school" vintage belly dance vinyl from the 1950's through the 1980's. George Abdo, Mohammed El-Bakkar, Gus Vali, Artie Barsamian, Eddie "The Sheik" Kochak, and so many more! Get your shimmy on at Radio Bastet - where the hafla never ends..."

http://radiobastet.libsyn.com/rss

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Carol Gilligan & Gabrielle Roth: On Joy & Pleasure

Culture Project presents Carol Gilligan & Gabrielle Roth: On Joy & Pleasure as part of its Women Center Stage series. Dancer Gabrielle Roth and psychologist Carol Gilligan will converse about Gilligan's The Birth of Pleasure and Roth's explorations into ecstatic dance. Monday, July 9, 7pm. At Culture Project, 55 Mercer Street, Manhattan. Call 212-352-3101 or click here.

Every Body is A Perfect Body

While doing research for an upcoming project, I found a short, helpful article on the development and aesthetics of the avant-garde Japanese dance form called Butoh ("earth dance") by actor and movement artist Don McLeod. I was especially fascinated by McLeod's discussion of the Butoh acceptance of age. In Western dance forms, performers are typically expected to embody refined ideals of appearance, technical ability and power and, as a result, have a shorter shelf-life.

"Most ballet and jazz dancers are sadly sent to pasture in their mid-thirties, and are soon passed over for younger, more physically capable models," McLeod writes. "With butoh, the mature body brings as much or more to the performance as does the youthful body." He cites the great Butoh pioneer Kazuo Ohno who, at the time of McLeod's writing, was 96 and still performing. (He is now 100.) "His withered, aged body is his canvas and he paints with great beauty upon it."

To read McLeod's "An Art Form in Transition," click here.

New York-based dancer-choreographer and writer Maura Nguyen Donohue also wrote a wonderful report on Ohno's 96th birthday party in Yokohama and reminiscence of some of his performances. Click here.

Of related interest:

See my recent remarks about a master class in Katherine Dunham dance at the Ailey Studios. Click here.

Tobi Tobias's review of Mikhail Baryshnikov's recent performance with Hell's Kitchen Dance on Voice of Dance.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Monday, July 2, 2007

Living Voudou

Speaking of Faith host Krista Tippett interviews Patrick Bellegarde-Smith--chairman of the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Download their podcast on Living Voudou.

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Noche Flamenca and Soledad Barrio in "Aldaba"

photo: Alfonso Losa & Soledad Barrio


by Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Noche Flamenca and the great Soledad Barrio are encamped at the East Village’s Theater 80, midway through a two-month stand before taking their new production, Aldaba, on world tour. Once again this Spanish troupe’s dancing, guitar playing and singing are tremendous; it would be news if they were not–and that’s unlikely to be the case as long as founder/artistic director Martín Santangelo draws breath. The troupe continues to top itself, show after show, exceeding all expectations.

Aldaba’s name refers both to a stone castle’s sonorous door knocker and to life-shaking moments of awakening. Accordingly, this full-tilt production offers flamenco shorn of theatrical adornment and gimmicks, infused with titanic emotion. A handful of chairs provide the small stage’s only decor, variously reconfigured and occupied by singers Manuel Gago and José Anillo; guitarists Miguel Perez and “Chuscales” (José Valle Fajardo); company dancers Barrio, Vanesa Coloma and Elena Martín, and guest dancers Alejandro Granados and Alfonso Losa. They are all “just folks” whose costumes eschew both uniformity and showbiz glamour, tending towards the personal, rumpled and funky. Stephen Petrilli’s lighting might be more aptly called “darking.” In many scenes, heavy shadows appear to take on flesh, emit primal, heartbroken cries, and pluck liquid lines of sound from guitars. Even when fully illuminated, performers reach within themselves to draw from wells of melancholy and dark power.

Both the unforgettable Barrio and the intrepid Granados have redefined flamenco dance for American audiences. Now comes Losa in his first season with Noche Flamenco, a revelation. In the Solea por Bulerias, he seems to struggle with himself, a figure of roiling, looming danger, at times veering so far off-kilter (emotionally and physically) that he might tumble to the floor. But then he turns, rears, and with a look of gathering clarity, pulls himself together in time to launch a new attack on invisible or remembered enemies. Savion Glover’s next tap-plus experiment should include a one-on-one with Losa. Now that would be worthy match.

How wonderful to see Noche Flamenca again at Theater 80, its New York home, where the comfortable intimacy of the space and the performers’ clever use of it make an audience feel like guests at a tablao or members of the troupe’s extended family! You can catch Aldaba there through July 29. For complete schedule and ticketing details, call 212-352-3101 or click here and here.


© 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa