The Culture Warriors: empowering the creative community

Full Spectrum and Dance Theater Workshop present

THE CULTURE WARRIORS:

A Panel Discussion with Six Stakeholders on the Front Lines of Fighting for the Arts

November 6, 2008, 6:30-9:30pm @ Dance Theater Workshop/ FREE

On November 6, 2008, from 6:30-9:30 p.m., Full Spectrum and Dance Theater Workshop will present THE CULTURE WARRIORS, a panel discussion with six stakeholders on the front lines of fighting for the arts. Panelists Patricia Cruz [Executive Director, Harlem Stage], Robert Elmes [Founder/Director, Galapagos Art Space], Arana J. Hankin, [Assistant Secretary for Cultural & Economic Development, Office of NYS Governor David A. Paterson], Ruby Lerner [Executive Director, Creative Capital], and Amy Sadao [Executive Director, Visual AIDS], together with Karen Brooks Hopkins [President, BAM], the panel’s moderator, will address the question, "Given the current economic crisis, how do we mobilize the creative community to action?"

This free event will begin with a screening of The Port Huron Project, a series of reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movements of the 1960s and '70s, by director Mark Tribe. porthuronproject.blip.tv

Schedule of Events

6:30 film screening of The Port Huron Project

7:00 panel discussion

8:00 audience Q&A

9:00 mingle

Dance Theater Workshop

219 West 19th Street (between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea)

212-691-6500

1/9 to 18th St, or 2/3, F, L and A/C/E to 14th St

Says Full Spectrum co-founder Danny Simmons, “There is no economic bail-out for cash strapped cultural institutions. As we teeter on the brink of ecological and economic devastation it is vitally important that the arts are available to brighten this gray landscape. The Culture Warriors on this panel will explore new and innovative techniques for empowering the creative community.”

Full Spectrum is a multidisciplinary forum where cutting-edge creators discuss the ideas and experiences behind their work. The series gives audiences an intimate look at the creative process, while exploring complex social issues through a prism of arts and culture. Full Spectrum was developed by musician/event producer Brian Tate, and painter/gallery owner/philanthropist Danny Simmons [Co-founder, Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation].

YouTube: Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off

Just in time for Halloween. Something truly scary!

Revolution Fuck Yeah workshop

Revolution Fuck Yeah: A Political Gathering Over Three Evenings with Mårten Spångberg

December 1-3 (Monday-Wednesday) 6:30pm-9:30pm
Dance Theater Workshop Conference Room

FREE - limited to 15 participants - pre-registration required*

This workshop addresses the potential political capacities of dance to extensive transformations towards a society of performance. What repercussions on the level of the political has the fad of performance and performativity in intellectual and academic circuits over the last 15 years had on dance practices and production? This workshop is a political gathering in the sense that it aims to re-claim the potentially political nature of dance and with that the formation/articulation of the history of dance to a community of practitioners. This is a necessary claim in order to liberate dance from repressive structural attributes, and open it for contemporary forms of expression. We serve coffee and tea with cookies. Hosted by Mårten Spångberg and the Program for Choreography, Univ. College of Dance Stockholm.

*Pre-registration is strongly advised. Register online. For questions relating to online registration, email info@movementresearch.org.

Movement Research Fall Festival 2008: Sidewinder
December 1- December 13, 2008

Movement Research's FALL Festival 2008: Sidewinder will feature workshops, performances and studies projects led by festival participants at venues throughout the city (see individual listings below for details). Festival events, running December 1 -December 13, 2008, focus on improvisation and feature acclaimed experimentalists highlighting and juxtaposing their varied investigations into the artistic currents of the form. Jennifer Monson and Zeena Parkins act as this year's curatorial advisors.

For more information on workshops, studies projects and performances, click here.

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Fly Me to the Deity
by Tunku Varadarajan, The New York Times, October 28, 2008

Aviles and Rice-Gonzalez update

Here's an update, just received, from Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez. (See my original post, here, about the fire in their home.)

We want to thank everyone for their outpouring of love and support. We’re so fortunate to have a loving and powerful community around us and we apologize for not being able to respond to everyone.

We will get back to folks individually in addition to this e-mail, but one of the saving graces of this technology it allows us to say the same thing in one fell swoop, especially when each time we talk about "what happened" it brings back a lot of our pain and loss.

We’re thankful for the many offers we’ve had to stay in spare rooms, crash on couches, stay at guest homes and other accommodations. There were so many that they would support a "Charles and Arthur" gypsy tour for the next year, at least.

From Cassandra offering her place to us while she crashes with a friend, to the youth of the Bronx Pride Center organizing a bake sale, to Eva Yaa Asantewaa posting the info on her blog (http://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2008/10/fire-at-home-of-arthur-aviles.html), to Bill Aguado from the Bronx Council on the Arts's generous offers, to Elizabeth, Jorge and my mom and family offering their cars for us to get around and to the cards with checks or donations that have appeared out of the blue, we are moved to tears with every offer and every act. Arthur and I share the phone messages from our respective cell phones and the e-mails with each other and each voice, each note is received like a much needed hug.

We’re strong guys but this has been very difficult. And we miss Canela immensely.

Here is a general update:

• Mrs. Ross is settled in with Mr. & Mrs. Phillips who live across the street and have known Mrs. Ross for nearly all of the 50 years she has lived on Manida Street. If you know her and would like to send a note they can be sent c/o Mr. & Mrs. Phillips, 852 Manida Street, Bronx, NY 10474.
• Arthur and I are staying at a furnished apartment that Pregones Theatre in the Bronx has for visiting artists. It’s private and quiet and a short bus ride to BAAD! Jorge, Alvan and everyone at Pregones have been great lending support and stepping back to give us space.
• We are dealing with Canela’s remains and will have a small ceremony at some point to honor her life and all the love that she lavished on us and the love we gave to her for the 9 ½ years that she was with us.
• Arthur and I are helping Mrs. Ross navigate the logistics and legalities following the fire - dealing with public adjusters, her insurance agency, etc.
• The damage needs to be assessed and catalogued by the public adjuster and Mrs. Ross’s insurance company before we know what is salvageable from our place.
• As you may know, insurance companies strive to pay as little as possible, so until the adjuster battles it out, we won’t know how quickly our apartment will be habitable again.
• Thankfully the physical damage to our apartment didn’t go beyond the busted windows and skylights, several holes in walls through out the apartment, the destruction of some property and the smoke damage to all the clothes, coats, linens and furniture. (The Red Cross was helpful with tips on how to salvage clothes, so we’ve been able to get some clothes out and clean them.) But it could be several months before we are back in our home.
• Arthur and I are now working to balance our lives by returning to the joy of the work we do at BAAD! and with creating and expressing our respective arts, taking up our other responsibilities while we deal with all the post fire logistics to support Mrs. Ross.

So for now, in response to all your offers for assistance, we are in a ‘holding pattern’ and will have a better idea of what to ask for in the coming week or weeks. But things that may come up are help cleaning our place to sort out what is trash and what is salvageable before the official cleaning company comes in to remove the debris. Then we can assess what we need to have replaced in terms of furniture, beds, coats, etc. Mrs. Ross’s property is covered to a certain extent with her insurance, but we, as her tenants, are not, and unfortunately we didn’t have renter’s insurance. (Which we discovered is not that high, but that’s relative.)

So for now, we will hold your good thoughts, prayers and offerings close to our heart. They have all been very healing. We hope to see you at BAAD! or around soon. And with all the love, support and resources Arthur and I will get through this.

With Love,
Charles and Arthur

Juli's inconvenient truth

Sara Juli's dance with Death--now creeping towards its unavoidable terminus on November 2 at Performance Space 122--offers neither philosophical nor spiritual solace. It is what it is. Death happens, and in the course of it, it shows us exactly who we are. And that is what it is, too.

Managing to come across as both the proverbial elephant in the living room and the dying swan, Juli gives us a mess of things to ingest, if not digest. Pregnant and wearing a complicated, unsightly outfit that makes her look ungainly, she's the unexpected and unwanted guest at the party, the scorned one wielding the fickle finger of fate, speaking sometimes with clarity and unshakeable certainty, sometimes in gibberish but equal certainty, and sometimes just in a dull, mealy-mouthed mumble. (Death makes sense and makes no sense.) And Juli is, at times, the victim of fate who becomes our responsibility.

This party lasts for about 5o minutes, and there's not a minute in there that lets us off the hook. Not even the humor--so much a part of who she is as a person and as a performer--goes down easily, and when it comes, it is a tenuous and fragile and self-conscious thing.

It was easier--and a bit more fun--to examine our feelings about money with The Money Conversation, Juli's celebrated 2006 solo, despite the fact that talking openly about money is also a big American taboo. That work generated conversation, indeed, as Juli hoped, and it will be interesting to see if this new piece will have a similar result. Details, schedule and ticketing information

Women playwrights underrepresented

Female Playwrights to Hold Meeting to Discuss Bias by Theaters
by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, October 24, 2008

A "Sublime" week

From The Sublime to the sublime and even more sublimity! For me, this has been an exceptionally rewarding week in dance. I don't want to put any undue pressure on the wonderful Sara Juli--my Body and Soul podcast interviewee whose new work, Death, I plan to see tonight at P.S. 122--but I'm hoping that my luck and this string of remarkable events will continue.

The Sublime is Us--an intriguing new piece by another recent Body and Soul interviewee, Luciana Achugar--continues running through November 1 at Dance Theater Workshop. It's a feast of instinct and sensuality set before a small audience placed in intimate proximity to the dancers--Achugar, Hilary Clark, Jennifer Kjos, Melanie Maar and Beatrice Wong--and the studio mirrors with which they partner. Visually, we become part of the dance, forced to also gaze upon ourselves and our fellow audience members in self-consciousness or curiosity, as we keep an eye on the performers. The pit-of-the-stomach visceral effect of this set up and of much of the movement cannot be overstated. Achugar, once again, seeks to take us deep into the natural intelligence and experience of the body. Details, schedule and ticketing information

At BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, Belgium's Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, her dance troupe, Rosas, and the musical ensemble Ictus, performing live, offer a sublime tribute in Steve Reich Evening with music by Reich and György Ligeti, now through tomorrow evening. Here is an expansive and celestial feast of sound, light, choreography and performance, from the simplest first course--the varied sonic play of two pendulating microphones--to the complex and electrifying conclusion, Drumming--Part 1. Precision. Discipline. Exaltation. Worth any price, if you can still snare a ticket. Details, schedule and ticketing

Tami Stronach has gone straight to my heart. She has simply pushed open its door and taken up residence. Whether dancing the opening solo in her new But it's for you or deploying the ravishing duo of Lindsey Dietz-Marchant and Darrin M. Wright, this wildly imaginative, poetic choreographer never hits a false note or shows us anything our jaded eyes have seen before or could anticipate. She finds the human soul in exacting, abstract movement. In vulnerable romantic partnerings, she finds energies and images of extraordinary, even alarming power. And what a team--in particular, the aforementioned dancers, who could not have been better chosen nor delivered more affecting performances; lighting designer Japhy Weideman; and scenic designer Joe Levasseur. This sublime beauty ends its run tomorrow evening. Trust me: You don't want to miss your chance to savor it. Details, schedule and ticketing

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Barack Obama for President
The New York Times Editorial Board, October 23, 2008

Fire at home of Arthur Aviles

Word has just come in about a fire last night at the Bronx home of dancer-choreographer Arthur Aviles and his partner, writer-publicist Charles Rice-Gonzalez.

Arthur and Charles--who were away at a class at BAAD!--are safe but, sadly, their dog, Canela, did not make it out. Canela's barking was what first alerted their landlady and saved her life. The landlady's efforts to save Canela in turn were unsuccessful, and the dog died of smoke inhalation.

As I learn more, I will keep IB readers updated about how Arthur and Charles are faring and how the community can offer support.

In an email statement about the incident, the couple wrote:

Mrs. Ross's apartment was completely destroyed and our place wasn't directly damaged by the fire, but they had to break through walls, and the roof and break out all the windows in every room and trashed the house, there's water damage everything smells of smoke.

So, we have a lot to deal with today and over the next few days including going to the Red Cross. They will help us find a place to live.

We are feeling so many things at the moment and are working hard to think clearly.

We know that people will want to help, and we are not sure how to respond. We are moving very slowly.

The bright light in all this is that Mrs. Ross is fine and strong. And Arthur and I have each other (and the turtles).

And we have beautiful people in our lives.

Shani Collins: Woman Warrior

Check out this month's issue of Dance Magazine for my profile of dancer-choreographer Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins--Woman Warrior--pages 50-54.

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Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and 10 Legs
by Simon Romero, The New York Times, October 19, 2008

Comfort: a dance on the dark side

Click here for my Dance Magazine review of Jane Comfort and Dancers in Comfort's An American Rendition at The Duke on 42nd Street this past September.

The Turning World (65)

Rosanne Cash rocks!

Why I'd Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin
by Rosanne Cash, The Nation, October 10, 2008

LMCC to lead Governors Island arts development

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to Run Artists’ Studio and Exhibition Center on Governors Island
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, October 19, 2008

Tapping and healing

Tap, Tap, Tapping Toward Health
by Tara Parker-Pope, Well, The New York Times, October 14, 2008

MMAC offers a Free Super Dance Sunday

Free Super Dance Sunday
MANHATTAN MOVEMENT & ARTS CENTER OPEN HOUSE

October 26, 2008
9:30am to 6:30pm

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center will offer a Sunday of free classes to introduce its comprehensive program of adult open dance and fitness classes. Free classes in a variety of disciplines, from ballet to contemporary jazz to funk, taught by popular instructors will range in length from one hour to 90 minutes. Visitors will be encouraged to tour Manhattan’s newest dance facility, which includes 18,000 square feet of high-ceiling, column-free studios, and a state-of-the-art 160-seat theater for rental as a casting, rehearsal, special events or performance venue.

Click here for schedule and instructors, or call 212-787-1178.

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center
248 West 60th Street, Manhattan

Are you sincere? Harrell's "Quartet"

There are good-enough dances that stay on their side of the audience-performer divide, slide in front of your eyes, take a quick bow, and go. Nod fondly at them or turn away, unaffected and cold; it might not matter, one way or the other.

Quartet for the End of Time--created by Trajal Harrell and a disciplined team of performers and other collaborators, including dramaturg Julie Perrin--is not one of these.

Strangely, though, part of what drives this 90-minute work is just that kind of sliding by and going: the stylized yet casually cool demeanor of runway models and the apparent out-of-bodiness of erotic dancers. Yet, Harrell employs these same methods of presentation to question whether we've unknowingly slipped past an age of irony into one in which a renewed sincerity--an embodied sincerity--has regained a legitimate place within contemporary dance. The acknowledged sincerity of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time--a work of celestial beauty created inside the hell of Nazi imprisonment--provides the sticky base for Harrell's imaginative, multimedia exploration.

Dancers Sirah Foighel, Will Gordon, Liz Santoro and Christina Vasileiou provide exceptional performances (with the additional challenge of frequent nudity).

In his program notes, Harrell writes:

This dance is nothing more and nothing less than Maybe to spectacle. Maybe to virtuosity. Maybe to transformations and magic and make believe. Maybe to glamour and transcendancy of the star image. Maybe to the heroic.....Maybe to style....Maybe to seduction of the spectator by the wiles of the performer....Maybe to moving or being moved.

Are you ready for that? Virtuosity, magic, glamour, heroism, style...it's all there in Quartet, if you want it. The production issues from the murky, gloomy underground, haunted by the dead, and yet it dazzles. The visual elements--Erik Flatmo's set, Thomas Dunn's lighting and imagery by David Bergé and Harrell--conjure a space of shifting dimensionality, one that flattens, one moment, and fattens, the next.

Projected images face us straight on or, seductively, fold away sideways, as if someone is manipulating a giant pair of those skinny iPods. Messiaen's music has somehow magnetized samples from the likes of Imani Uzuri, Nina Simone, DJ Assault and Antony & The Johnsons. The energy of the imagery, sounds, and performance is richly layered but never hectic. The stylistic sophistication and the underlying sincerity contain each other, locked together like yin and yang.

This is a master work, one that will be remembered as a highlight of this dance season and of Harrell's provocative career.

Quartet for the End of Time continues tonight through Saturday at Dance Theater Workshop with performances at 7:30pm. Tonight, Thursday, meet Harrell for a pre-show "Coffee and Conversation" talk with Stephen Greco at 6:30pm in DTW's lobby.

In addition, Harrell will show Tickle the Sleeping Giant (stage number 8)--a "permanent work-in-progress"--on Saturday at 2pm (free to Quartet ticket holders).

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Are you a little confused, too? Watch this video, and things should get much clearer.

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Editorial: The Final Debate
The New York Times, October 15, 2008

Art and money

School Arts Programs Survive Budget Woes
Javier C. Hernandez, City Room blog, The New York Times, October 15, 2008

Itching to write?

Call for submission for itch 9: Before/After:a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts

Once again, itch invites you to contribute your words, images and ideas to our upcoming issue:

itch 9, Before/After: a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts.

Please find the call for submissions below. The deadline is December 1st. As always, feel free to contact us at submit@itchjournal.org if you have any questions.


(vote! vote! vote!)
yours truly,
team itch

Taisha Paggett, Sara Wolf, Meg Wolfe



CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: itch 9

Before/After: a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts


Poised on the political razor's edge of the looming election, the soundtrack for change is running—but, for better or for worse? As we sit on the cusp of this, one of the most important—and symbolically loaded—U.S. presidential elections... and begin drafting yet another list of resolutions as yet another new year approaches... and witness a baby boom big enough to transform the demographics of our local dance population, we can't help but consider those moments in ours lives in which we hover on Big Decisions that, once made, have the capacity to radically change the compasses we use to locate ourselves—for better or for worse. This, in turn, reminds us of making art: the initial brilliance of an idea, the dread we encounter when we can't figure out what the hell we were thinking, artist's blocks, unforeseen circumstances, production nightmares, getting out of our own way... and what happens when the work is finished, when we are left with the reality of what we created / exposed / elected / capsized / deconstructed / demolished / uprooted?


We the people of this After Christ/After Common era, post-9/11, post-tsunami, post-Katrina, pre-apocalypse (you think?) live on a timeline of events. itch 9 is on everything having to do with Befores and Afters. For this issue, we're interested in hearing about those events, decisions, and moments in life and art-making that have constructed (or will construct) a 'before' and 'after' in your sense of how you live, move through, and have a voice in your world.


We encourage submissions in a range of forms and tones: narrative, poetical, ruminative, theoretical, and visual; pre- and post- charts, scores, and project photographs—on such possible tangents as: mental/emotional renewal; create your own adventure stories; "the transition"; presidential elections; private or public/natural (or not) disasters; unforeseen acts of god(desses) or foreseeable consequences; the fashionable and the not; flights of fancy vs. Important Work; break-ups, break-throughs, breakfasts, and break-outs; tectonic shifts in your artistic/political/social/spiritual/conceptual practice; "giving birth" to… ; resolutions, predictions, hopes and wishes; temporality: past, present, and future; and (make your own) timelines.


And, since we're looking ahead, humor us: send us your IN/OUT, HOT/NOT lists.



*For our rolling dialogue section, please submit your responses to issue 8: Pornocracy*


(As we ruminate on these ideas, here is a toast to the now, the unknown, and the unknowable...)



D E A D L I N E: DECEMBER 1, 2008


send submissions, questions, and provocations as attached, uncompressed word files to
submit@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...

"Virtual Pillow"

Jacob's Pillow Dance has just announced a new technology initiative, funded by the Nonprofit Finance Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which will benefit ten arts organizations:

Jacob’s Pillow Dance has been chosen to take part in Leading for the Future: Innovative Support for Artistic Excellence, a groundbreaking $15.125 million arts initiative created by the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) and funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Jacob’s Pillow, America’s longest running dance festival, and a National Historic Landmark lauded as “the dance center of the nation and possibly the world” by The New York Times, is one of ten arts organizations from across the nation invited to participate in this initiative. Funds will be used to embark on a major initiative that will translate the on-site Pillow experience to new electronic media. Through this support, the Pillow is positioned to become a major provider of online dance content to the public, artists, dance students, and scholars.

“We are honored to receive this prestigious recognition from our field, and I'm thrilled to invoke two favorite words to describe the impact of this grant: ‘transformative investment,’ ” comments Ella Baff, Executive Director of Jacob’s Pillow. “This initiative will help us employ state of the art electronic media to extend every mission area of Jacob's Pillow - creation, presentation, education, preservation and audience engagement - to benefit the arts community and the public. This funding will remove the constraints of conventional time and physical location, allowing us to share our institutional resources such as the vast Archives, annual Festival, and Audience Engagement Program, with a broader, worldwide audience.”

“Leading for the Future will help trailblazing arts organizations continue to thrive in a society that is changing at lightning speed,” said Ben Cameron, director for the arts for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “Together with the Nonprofit Finance Fund, we hope to learn valuable lessons about how arts organizations can innovate, even when faced with the challenges of a slumping economy, shifting generational interests, and emerging technologies.”

“Leading for the Future participants have already proven themselves adept at artistic innovation; now, they will lead the way for arts organizations to reinvent their business platforms so the artistic side will be reliably supported,” said Clara Miller, president and CEO of NFF. “At a time when restricted gifts and carefully predicted outcomes are the status quo, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is offering these organizations the latitude and support that is required for true experimentation and change.”

Jacob’s Pillow’s initiative, with the working title “Virtual Pillow,” will aim to deepen engagement with existing dance patrons; build audiences for dance; and increase the visibility of past, present and future artists presented by Jacob’s Pillow. Through new electronic media, the Pillow will extend beyond its traditional Festival season and physical location in Becket, Mass., and reach larger audiences world-wide. For example, the Pillow’s vast Archives hold a great deal of dance history over the past century – an expansive resource that can be shared more broadly. The Pillow’s Archives contain more than 350,000 photographs, films, books, and historic documents and dwarf most library collections—including those of colleges and universities—for dance. These resources can be digitized and the material organized into online programs that add context and deepen understanding about individual artists and dance traditions, and help audiences understand evolving forms. Other areas of Virtual Pillow that will be researched and potentially implemented include live-streamed or delayed broadcast performances, participatory activities with online audiences, other resources for scholarly research, and more.

“In the cultural field, Jacob’s Pillow is seen as the ‘mother ship’ of dance,” comments Baff. “This initiative will share our resources and commitment to dance in new ways with existing audience members, educators, scholars, artists and, importantly, to build new audiences for dance. The Internet is a limitless venue, and a different kind of venue. Nothing can replace the unique experience of live dance or being on site in the beautiful and welcoming atmosphere of Jacob’s Pillow, but a Virtual Pillow will extend all that we have to offer in new, different and unique ways.”

Leading for the Future will provide Jacob’s Pillow with significant capital resources and advisory services. The goal of this national initiative is to enable a group of artistically outstanding organizations to strengthen their business in a changing environment, while providing instructive examples and models for other arts organizations to learn from and possibly replicate. Twenty finalists were asked to engage in a rigorous application process and take part in live interviews. Ten of these organizations were selected to receive the award: Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Center Theatre Group, Cunningham Dance Foundation, Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Misnomer Dance Theater, National Black Arts Festival, Ping Chong & Company, SITI Company, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and The Wooster Group. Jacob’s Pillow is the only organization from Massachusetts to receive the award.

Initially, the Pillow will receive $75,000 for a first year of planning, research and development, during which the organization will convene a think-tank, further develop and test project ideas and content formats, assess staffing needs, explore sustainability, and determine hardware, software and bandwidth needs. After determining its plan for the following four years, the Pillow is eligible to receive up to or more than one million dollars of support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and Nonprofit Finance Fund.

About Jacob’s Pillow

Founded by dance legend Ted Shawn in 1933, Jacob’s Pillow celebrated its 75th Anniversary Season in 2007. The Pillow is home to a world-renowned international dance Festival that presents dance annually on three performance stages for nearly three months. The Pillow also supports artists to create new work through commissions and Creative Development Residencies. The School at Jacob’s Pillow encompasses a professional training program in the disciplines of Ballet, Cultural Traditions, Contemporary Traditions, Jazz/Musical Theatre Dance, and a Choreographers Lab, as well as an Intern Program that trains young professionals in all areas of production and arts administration. Alumni of The School have gone on to perform with prestigious dance companies such as Merce Cunningham Dance Company, New York City Ballet, in film, television and on Broadway, and former interns have been employed at arts organizations including Mark Morris Dance Group, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, and The British Council. The Pillow’s rare and extensive Archives, open year-round to the public free of charge, chronicles the art form of dance in film, video, photographs, oral histories, correspondence, books, costumes, posters, audiotapes, and scrapbooks.

Jacob’s Pillow’s year-round Community Programs enrich the lives of children and adults, and are yet another part of the Pillow’s cultural legacy. Jacob's Pillow is the first and only dance entity in the United States to be declared a National Historic Landmark for the significance of its contribution to America’s culture—past and present.

The Pillow’s current 163-acre site was originally a family farm in the late 1700s. In the 1800s, the Pillow was known as a station on the Underground Railroad. In 2007, it was formally dedicated as a site on the Upper Housatonic Valley African American Heritage Trail. For additional in-depth information regarding the history of Jacob’s Pillow, consult www.jacobspillow.org. Members of the press are encouraged to contact Mariclare Hulbert at 413.243.9919 ext. 29 or via email at mhulbert@jacobspillow.org.

About Nonprofit Finance Fund

Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) is a national leader in nonprofit, philanthropic and social enterprise finance. Founded in 1980, NFF (http://www.nonprofitfinancefund.org ) provides loan financing, access to capital and direct advisory services that build the capacity and the financial health of nonprofits. A leading community development financial institution with over $80 million in assets, NFF has provided over $175 million in loans and access to additional financing via grants, tax credits and capital in support of over $1 billion in projects for thousands of nonprofit clients nationwide. NFF has a staff of more than 75 serving nonprofits nationally from offices in Philadelphia, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Boston, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (www.ddcf.org) is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties.

Presidential candidates and arts policy

Presidential Policies on the Arts: Obama Has One, McCain Doesn't
SWAN Day News: The Fund for Women Artists

Chase Granoff initiates Lobby TALKS @ DTW

Join Chase Granoff for the launch of Lobby TALKS @ Dance Theater Workshop, this Tuesday at 7:30pm. Granoff writes:

I am really hoping that this series will open up some space for timely community responsive dialogues and discussion. I know that we all feel that critical conversation and discourse is needed. Hopefully this series will grow into an active and exciting forum.

October 14: The (non) narrative use of language, voice and sound in performance

This conversation will explore the interest of spoken language and verbal sound in contemporary performance. We will discuss the narrative vs. non-narrative, and the tangible vs. the abstract. How does language (in) form the body? Do language and sound create a choreographic body? Join invited participants John Jesurun, Jenn Joy, Tere O'Connor, Ann Liv Young and others in this discussion.

A new initiative of Dance Theater Workshop, Lobby TALKS creates a forum for open and in-depth discourse on contemporary issues in dance and performance. Organized around specific themes, each meeting uses as a starting point one or more of the artistic investigations, methodologies, and motivations that can be seen in performance today and on our current season. Subjects will be investigated, challenged, and considered by an invited group of artists, critics, and theorists, and is open to all who would like to join the conversation.

Dance Theater Workshop information

The Turning World (62)

"the ghosts of emily dickinson mourn the loss of the american woodlands"
by Mary Armentrout, Critical Correspondence

Luciana Achugar update: Body and Soul podcast

Bessie Award-winning choreographer Luciana Achugar brings a new work--"The Sublime is Us"--to a studio space at Dance Theater Workshop, beginning October 21.

Program notes--http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Guest info at http://www.lachugar.org and http://www.dtw.org. (c)2008, Eva Yaa
Asantewaa

MP3 File

Program Notes: Upcoming on "Body and Soul"

My next guest--Bessie Award-winning choreographer Luciana Achugar--will be bringing a new work--The Sublime is Us--to a studio at Dance Theater Workshop this month. It was a pleasure to catch up with her. We last spoke in late January while this piece was in development and Achugar was preparing to revisit an older work, Franny and Zooey, for Sugar Salon, a program highlighting work by women choreographers. The Sublime is Us promises to offer what Achugar does best--invite watchers into an intimate space of expanded awareness, connection and meaning, grounded in the intelligence of the body.

Dance Theater Workshop ticketing
October 21-25, October 28-November 1 (7:30pm)
October 24, 25, 31, November 1 (9:30pm)
Post-Show Talk: Wednesday, October 22 with Levi Gonzalez
Coffee and Conversation Pre-Show talk: Thursday, October 23 at 6:30pm with Victoria Anderson Davies
Friday Night Toast October 24

Luciana Achugar is an Uruguayan choreographer based in Brooklyn. She moved to New York in 1995 after graduating from Cal Arts. In NY she worked as a dancer with several influential choreographers including Maria Hassabi, Chameckilerner and John Jasperse. From 1999 to 2003, she worked in a close collaborative relationship with choreographer Levi Gonzalez and has been doing her own independent work since 2002.

Achugar has created five independent works and will premiere her sixth project--The Sublime is Us--at Dance Theatre Workshop in October 2008. Her work has been presented in NY at Movement Research’s MELT Festival; the Ensemble Studio Theatre; The Latino American Dance: Not Festival Project; CANADA Gallery; Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery; La MaMa; Abrons Arts Center; Danspace Project and Dance Theatre Workshop; in Cambridge Massachusets at the Green Studios and in Uruguay at the Festival Iberoamericano de Danza and the Centro Cultural de España. In September 2007 she received a BESSIE Award as Creator/Choreographer for her first full evening-length piece Exhausting Love at Danspace Project which premiered in November 2006.

Luciana Achugar is a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in Choreography. She was a 2007 Choreography Fellow of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University and a Sugar Salon Artist, a program developed by WAX in partnership with the Barnard College Department of Dance. She was a 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and has been in Residencies at Barnard College, Bennington College, DTW’s Outer/Space Program, the LEX-Dance Summer Residency, MANCC at FSU and at the Daghdha Dance Company in Limerick, Ireland. Her work has received support from the Meet the Composer Fund; the Puffin Foundation; The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund; and from public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the LMCC.

X-Acting dance

Denmark's Kitt Johnson (of Kitt Johnson X-Act) entered dance as an elite athlete at age 24. Her solo work Rankefod--given its New York premiere in the dimmed, solemn confines of St. Mark's Church--shows her harboring a convert's pure absorption in an embraced faith. The 55-minute piece--named for a class of parasitic crustaceans, such as barnacles--appears to be an earnest expression of nature in evolution. Its accompaniment--composed and performed by Sture Ericson--comes in thick layers and clusters, like the sounds of doomed creatures and environments being sucked into a black hole. Charlotte Østergaard’s set gives birth to a strange, brittle critter (Johnson) in a landscape of richly-worked textile that is, by turns and by virtue of Mogens Kjempff's variant lighting, murkily folkish and shimmeringly, mysteriously elegant.

Johnson has won praise and frequent honors for her dancing and choreography. She is indeed a striking, authoritative presence, a master of physical contortion and contorted perambulation. She draws us out of our human mindspace into something entirely primeval. And yet, Rankefod, with its strong thematic and visual kinship to Butoh, seems--as concept and choreography--to be more derivative than fresh.

Kitt Johnson X-Act's Rankefod continues tonight and tomorrow at 8:30pm at Danspace Project (866-811-4111).

Culture on the cheap

Dance folks, contribute your comments to this article:

Cheap Seats - Bad Times, Good Prices
by Ben Sisario, The New York Times, October 9, 2008

This is a great opportunity to talk up dance!

Ramirez: a lion of dance steps down

Tina Ramirez Says Good-bye to Ballet Hispanico
by Julie Bloom, The New York Times, October 8, 2008

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East Village Opera Company: Soldiers
YouTube

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Wall Street’s Tremors Leave Harlem Shaken
by Timothy Williams, The New York Times, October 7, 2008

BAAD! capoeira

BAAD! (The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) will offer a series of three capoeira classes for dancers of all levels, instructed by Bronx (Moses McCarter) of Ginga Mundo on Wednesdays, October 15, 22 and 29 at 6:30pm. The fee is $5 per class or $12 for all three dates. Capoeira ritualizes movement from the martial arts, African dance and acrobatics. For more information, contact BAAD! at 718-842-5223 or click here.

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As the Economy Staggers, the New York Theater World Hopes for the Best
by Patricia Cohen, The New York Times, October 7, 2008

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Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin
by Cynthia Boaz, truthout, September 30, 2008

Paul Taylor Company to lose SoHo space

Paul Taylor Dance Troupe, Tripped Up by Rent, Seeks a New Home
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, October 6, 2008

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Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis

Dancers, get healthy!

Bodies In Balance is "a one-day series of interactive presentations focusing on the care and healing of the dancer's extraordinary instrument of art--the body and exploring "the ways you can ensure a holistic integration of technical competency, artistic fluency, career longevity and comprehensive health."

Open to students, professional dancers, parents, teachers and administrators

Saturday, October 18 (10am-5:30pm)

at the New York City Ballet Rehearsal Studios
Samuel B. & David Rose Building, 8th Floor
70 Lincoln Center Plaza

For a full schedule of the day's events, and to download a registration form, click here.

Dancers go to the bathroom

Dark Horse/Black Forest, by Yanira Castro + Company, brings dance to a space really near you--your bathroom.

That's right. Get in touch with Castro through her new season's sponsoring organization, Performance Space 122, and you can arrange your own private performance of this work in your bathroom.

"There are no theatrical divisions and the experience is not one of distance but rather that of action beside and around you. By deciding to invite the dancers into your home you are granted the unique and exquisite experience of forever owning and being a part of a piece of live art."

To arrange for a performance, email darkhorse@ps122.org.

And click here for my Body and Soul podcast interview with Castro (February 4, 2008).

Ailey's new yoga program

On Tuesday, October 7, The Ailey Extension, partnering with yoga instructor Porschla Coleman, launches a new weekly Tapas Yoga program. Tapas is a Jivamukti-inspired technique, and its name means fire or burning. All classes will be taught by teachers of color whose training has been sponsored by Russell Simmons. Coleman’s clients have included Simmons, Jason Kidd, and many other celebrities.

The Ailey Extension features dance and fitness classes--including Lester Horton technique, West African dance, ballet, hip hop, jazz dance and more. These classes are open to the general public for beginners and students of all levels of movement experience.

Porschla Coleman is a certified Jivamukti yoga teacher, philanthropist and model who received her yoga teaching certification at the world renowned Omega Institute. She chose to get her certification in Jivamukti yoga because it is considered the most respected practice in the world. She attended an intense 30-day immersion in yoga philosophy and scripture, the history of yoga, an introduction to Sanskrit, introduction to anatomy, and all aspects of Jivamukti Yoga. Porschla has been mentored by such great yogis as Sharon Gannon, David Life and Gabriela Bozic and believes that yoga is a life attitude, through which one learns to accept responsibility for his or herself and all the actions of one's life. She firmly believes that Yogis can make the world a more beautiful and more sincere place. In addition to her yoga teachings, Porschla sits on the Board of Directors for the Marsha Barber Community Center which is a community center being built in one of the hardest hit areas of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Being from Mississippi, this charity holds a special place in her heart. Porschla is also the newest correspondent for Talk Radio News Service which will soon take her around the world to raise awareness of global humanitarian issues.

Tuesdays, 6:30-7:45pm

Click here for The Ailey Extension.

The Ailey Extension, The Joan Weill Center for Dance, 405 West 55th Street at Ninth Avenue --212-405-9000

No quarrel with Jones

Bill T. Jones's A Quarreling Pair, which regrettably closes tomorrow evening at BAM's Gilman Opera House, is a huge, generous apparition--95 minutes of full-tilt, multidimensional vaudeville of the mind. Blown up from a four-page, two-character puppet play written by Jane Bowles in 1945, it has become a thing of delicate and bodacious beauty, oddity, vulgarity, fierce insight and poetry in equal measure. It speaks of the nakedness, the vulnerability of the artist who ventures out into the messy, messy world.

Every artist who put his or her shoulder to this wheel gave of the highest quality: Bill T. Jones (conception, direction, originial text, and choreography in collaboration with Janet Wong and the company), Bjorn G. Amelan (set design--wow!), Robert Wierzel (lighting), Liz Prince (costume design--heavenly!); Janet Wong (video design); Sam Crawford (sound design--crafty!), and the excellent team of Wynne Bennett, Christopher William Antonio Lancaster and George Lewis, Jr. (composition and performance of original music). Jones's sublime performers include Antonio Brown, Asli Bulbul, Peter Chamberlin, Leah Cox, Maija Garcia, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, LaMichael Leonard, I-Ling Liu, Paul Matteson and Erick Montes with Tracy Ann Johnson.

Sure to stand as one of the highlights of the current season and of Jones's exceptional career, A Quarreling Pair should be seen now and revisited. I can barely wait for its return.

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
718-636-4100




Bill T. Jones, in Giddy Mood, Unveils Comic `Pair'
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com
(originally in Bloomberg News, October 2, 2008)

At the Next Wave Festival, a Woman Wanders in Search of Herself
by Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, October 1, 2008

Mammograms for the uninsured

In observance of Women's Health Month, St. Vincent’s Hospital (325 West 15th Street, Manhattan) will offer free mammograms on Friday, October 17 (7:30am to 4pm).

To make an appointment, call 212-604-6009. Walk-ins are also welcome.

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Just do it, y'all!

The Body and its Image roundtable

The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination
at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute
(Edward Nersessian and Francis Levy, Directors)

invites you to a Roundtable
Saturday, October 4, 2008 at 3:30pm

The Philoctetes Center
247 East 82nd Street
(Phone: 646-422-0544; email: info@philoctetes.org)

Events at Philoctetes are free and open to the public. Seating is on a first come basis.

The Body and its Image

Over the past decade there has been a moral panic about inappropriate body size. Anorexia nervosa and obesity have become touchstones for discussions of social and personal failure, of the supremacy of genetics over human choice, of the global expansion of normative ideas of the body—indeed, for virtually all discussions about what has gone wrong in our contemporary world. Meanwhile, artistic representations offer another vision of what it means to inhabit a body. This panel will examine the interlocked questions of the meanings attached today to bodily difference and representation, and the role that these debates play in our psychological and physical well-being.

Marina Abramovic has been a pioneer of performance as a visual art form since beginning her career in Belgrade in the early 1970s. The body has always been both her subject and medium. She has explored her physical and mental limits in works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life. From 1975–88, Abramovic collaborated with the German artist Ulay, addressing the nature of duality. Since returning to solo performances in 1989, she has presented her work at major institutions in the US and Europe, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Neue National Galerie in Berlin. She has also participated in many large-scale international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta VI, VII, and IX in Kassel, Germany. Recent performances include "House with Ocean View" at New York's Sean Kelly Gallery and "7 Easy Pieces" at the Guggenheim Museum. Among her upcoming projects are a retrospective at MoMA and a theatre piece directed by Robert Wilson that will premier in 2011.

Paul Campos is Professor of Law at the University of Colorado and a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service. He has written widely about the legal, medical, and social consequences of narrow definitions of what constitutes a "normal body." He is the author of The Obesity Myth. His work on this subject has been featured in Scientific American, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

Sander Gilman (moderator) is a Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, where he is the Director of the Program in Psychoanalysis and the Health Sciences Humanities Initiative. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author or editor of eighty books. His Oxford lectures, Multiculturalism and the Jews, appeared in 2006. His most recent edited volume, Diets and Dieting: A Cultural Encyclopedia, appeared in 2007. He has held professorships in humanities and medicine at Cornell University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also served as the Visiting Historical Scholar at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda; as a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; as a Berlin prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin; and as the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Comparative Literature at Oxford University.

Marcel Kinsbourne is a behavioral neurologist and Professor of Psychology at the New School. Educated at Oxford University, he has held professorships at Duke University and the University of Toronto. His research interests center on problems in neuropsychology and child development. He has published in excess of 400 medical and scientific articles and authored or edited eight books, including The Asymmetrical Function of the Brain, The Unity and the Diversity of the Human Brain, and Consciousness: The Brain's Private Psychological Field.

Julie Atlas Muz, Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island 2006, is a choreographer, actor and artist based in New York City. Muz was included in the Whitney Biennial 2004 and has performed her work all over the world. Her alter ego, Mr. Pussy was a main attraction at a show she co-curated with Kembra Pfahler at Dietch Projects, entitled Womanizer. She recently co-created and performed a new erotic version of "Beauty and the Beast" with Mat Fraser, a UK based artist with Thalidomide, at Dadafest in Liverpool.

Sabine Wilhelm is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Harvard Medical School. She is Director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Disorders Program and Director of the Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wilhelm is internationally recognized as a leading researcher on Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a distressing preoccupation with an imagined defect in one’s appearance. She currently is the principal investigator of two studies investigating treatments for the disorder funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. She wrote the book, Feeling Good About the Way You Look: A Program for Overcoming Body Image Problems and has many other publications. Dr. Wilhelm serves on several editorial boards and regularly provides continuing education workshops nationally and internationally.

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The mission of the Philoctetes Center is to foster the study of imagination — funding research, organizing roundtable discussions, offering courses and programs open to the public. The Center publishes a newsletter, Dialog, and is developing a web-based clearing house on work related to imagination. The Center also publishes a journal, Philoctetes. Visit The Philoctetes Center web site for more information.

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Tribute to Paul Newman

A great actor, a great man