The arts take action

More Aid for the Arts Is Sought
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, March 30, 2009

Berkeley Rep's Green Day

Punk CD is Going Theatrical
by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, March 29, 2009

I'm excited to see Steven Hoggett mentioned as choreographer for Berkeley Rep's adaptation of American Idiot. Hoggett did crucial and magnificent work for National Theatre of Scotland's Black Watch. Click here for my brief remarks about that show and Hoggett's essential role.

Queen GodIs pregnant with our future

Multi-talented Queen GodIs, showing an as-yet-untitled work-in-progress at Dance Theater Workshop, taps deep into myth, metaphor and the soul-expressive powers of movement. In her duet with actor Erwin E. A. Thomas, GodIs, known for her hip hop poetry and music, returns to an old love--dance--and passionately weaves movement into her storytelling.

This choreo-poem, directed and choreographed by Nicco Annan and developed through DTW's Studio Series residency, was presented last evening in the David White Studio (and runs again this evening at 7:30). During an informal post-performance Q&A, the small audience explored the work's themes and inquired about various aspects of the creative process.

The piece raises issues of the often-fraught and troubled relationship between Black men and women and calls men to account for sacrificing their true sensitivity for a false sense of power. Beyond those specifics, though, I feel that it holds us all accountable for the right use of our own creative powers, and I am reminded of the well-known quote from the Gnostic Gospels, said to have been spoken by Jesus: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring will save you. If you do not being forth what is within you, what you do not will destroy you."

The point is that not bringing forth the sensitivity and love that is within us also destroys the planet. It is in turning our backs on our own creative, relational roles in the world--whatever those roles may be--that we withdraw and wither, and the result for our partnerships, for our communities and for the well-being of all nations has been dire.

In that respect, GodIs's performance piece is generative and inspirational; how appropriate that her central metaphor is one of pregnancy! GodIs envisions a society in which we are all pregnant with something, and she appears to ask each of us, what are you pregnant with? What are you bringing forth?

In particular, she reminds men of the primal power of words. She will accept the word bitch, for instance, only in its ancient meaning: queen of wolves.

A tall pole, painted red, rises atop a small platform, swathed in gauzy, white fabric, where Thomas portrays GodIs's womb-borne "Sun." GodIs sometimes undulates around that pole like a pole dancer, and I am reminded of the multiplicity of ways in which poles and pole-like objects have blended the sacred and the mundane or profane in the archetypal imagination of the world's peoples. Think of maypoles, an integral symbol of the intercourse between the Great Goddess and her consort at Beltane; or voudou's poteau-mitan, the central post, which unites the heavens and the underworld; or various culture's spiritual symbols of the generative phallus.

GodIs will offer one more showing of this interesting performance--tonight at 7:30pm--but seating is very limited. Call 212-924-0077. Tickets are free with a suggested $5 donation.

60x60 at Galapagos

60x60 Dance returns to Dumbo's Galapagos Arts Space, pairing 60 composers with choreographers to create 60 dances for a one-hour multimedia performance.

Tuesday-Wednesday, April 7-8 (8pm)

60x60 Dance is a multimedia extravaganza creating 60 dances with the works of 60 composers for a thrilling one-hour surfing of today's music and dance scenes. Envisioned by 60x60 project director Robert Voisey and choreographer Jeramy Zimmerman, this one-of-a-kind performance consists of 60 modern dance pieces set to 60 different and brand-new one-minute compositions. Dance influences range from ballet and tango to postmodern movements, while music includes medieval chant, neo-romantic chamber music, jazz, pop, electronica and everything but the kitchen sink.

Slots for choreographers remain available. If you agree to participate, you will be e-mailed a one-minute piece of music, and it's up to you to make a one-minute dance for it. Each night the call is at 5pm for tech and runthrough; performance at 8pm. Everyone improvs the first and last minute. If you're interested, please contact Jeramy Zimmerman at jeramy@catscratchtheatre.org.

Get information
Get tickets ($10)

Galapagos Arts Center (16 Main Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn)
718-222-8500
info@galapagosartspace.com

Tavis Smiley hosts Jamison

The Tavis Smiley Show will dedicate an entire segment to a conversation with Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Broadcast nationwide, this program is currently scheduled to air, in the New York metropolitan area, tonight on WNET/Ch 13 at midnight and to be re-broadcast on Monday, March 30 at 1pm.

For a preview of the interview and to check your local listings for broadcast times in your area, click here.

Late-night Hennessy: special DTW deal

Keith Hennessy/Zero Performance is working a late-night gig--featuring Hennessy's solo, Antibody--at Dance Theater Workshop on Friday, April 3 at 10:30pm. What's more, if you already have a ticket for DTW's Hennessy/Melanie Maar shared program earlier that evening, you can see Hennessy in Antibody at the recession-friendly price of $5. All others pay $10.

Information and ticketing, or call 212-505-0426.

Antibody is live performance research, testing the potential of art as a liberating force, as transformative ritual, as rhetorical pedagogy, and as pleasurable entertainment.By calling the performance-action Antibody, Hennessy links the one-time-only event to a personal lineage of improvised performances, spontaneous choreographies, and real-time dancing. Costumes might change. Objects might appear. There will be talking, maybe singing, and lots of movement, dance, and physical action. Antibody has been performed in variations of 15 to 75 minutes in theaters and studios since 2000, most recently at The Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater in Chicago, October 2008.

By calling the performance-action Antibody, Hennessy links the one-time-only event to a personal lineage of improvised performances, spontaneous choreographies, and real-time dancing. Costumes might change. Objects might appear. There will be talking, maybe singing, and lots of movement, dance, and physical action. Antibody has been performed in variations of 15 to 75 minutes in theaters and studios since 2000, most recently at The Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater in Chicago, October 2008.

Nothing is scripted or choreographed in advance, but Hennessy will have access to 30 years of performance habits, training, making, and watching. It is likely that the economic disaster will be addressed. It is unlikely that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be mentioned or even referred to. Formal considerations will focus on the ritual bending of time and space, the potential for embodied intelligence to be revealed through improvised performance, and the role of the artist-audience relationship in a country at permanent war. Antibody is a performance ritual in which symbolic action in one world is intended to affect another. The goal is a lucid dream in which the body and the theatrical context become metaphors for re-visioning our personal and social fears, doubts, desires and ambitions.

Keith Hennessy is an award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. He dances. Hennessy was born in Canada, lives in San Francisco and works often in Europe. His interdisciplinary research engages improvisation, spectacle, ritual, and public action as tools for investigating and re-visioning political realities. Alone and with others, Hennessy makes politically engaged, soul-touching performance. Hennessy directs Circo Zero Performance, a performance-making company that sometimes includes circus arts in a cross-disciplinary and body-based approach to performance art. Click here for more information.

A Woman Among Wolves

Click arrow to begin. Scroll down and click Full Screen.
And do not miss the final 10 or so minutes.

Family feud in review: Bill T. Jones

A Quarreling Pair by Bill T. Jones, at the Kennedy Center
by Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post, March 26, 2009

Eva's Book Club (4)

Dance folks, what are you reading?

Just completed:

Where The Mountain Casts Its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure by Maria Coffey (St. Martin's Press, 2003)

And now I'm very eager to read Coffey's more recent book: Explorers of the Infinite.

Use the Comments feature to tell us what you're reading!

A great, big Yes!

Yessified!--by Sally Silvers & Dancers at Performance Space 122--is, as advertised, a dance about race, not racism. That's clear. Which is probably one reason I had such a good time watching it, although, at times, I found myself drifting in and out of certain segments where the apparently infinite Silvers stream of inventiveness got to be a bit too much.

But that didn't happen often. For the most part, Silvers and her multicultural fellow dancers--Javier Cardona, Liz Filbrun, Alan Good, Sara Beth Higgins, Takemi Kitamura, Alejandra Martorell, Miriam Parker and Keith Sabado--use their bodies to nonverbally argue for America as a place where races and cultures are already vitally and inextricably interwoven.

Silvers begins from base camp--from her life as a Appalachian-born white woman (who questions what white really means) and from her career in postmodern dance. Surrounding herself with a corps of prancing balletomodern sylphs, she clearly identifies as misfit and mutt. From there, she introduces her theme of the continuous, interlocked twirling of yin and yang and, from that foundational twirling, begins spinning her world-wide spider web of quirky and constantly readjusted interconnections.

Yessified! boasts numerous delicious duets and ensemble numbers and one adorable solo for Sabado. Everyone works very, very hard, especially since every moment is simply chock-full of stuff. This is the most stuffed hour of dance I've ever seen. I think Silvers might have been trying to convey the sense of pace and crowdedness of the city or, beyond that, the bigness and Whitmanesque complexity of America.

And any dance set to a score that--among many, many other rich things--evokes the likes of Otis Redding and Sam and Dave? Well, Sally, I'm there. The vibrant sound score conjured up by Bruce Andrews and Michael Schumacher--with its dissonance and its classic, perennial soul--is one of the most satisfying achievements of this season.

Yessified!--a joyful discovery--ends perfectly, just as I envisioned and wanted.

See Yessified! now through this Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 6:30pm. Tickets at Performance Space 122, or call 212-352-3101.

FYI: The Congressional Arts Caucus

Members of the Senate Cultural Caucus

Members of the House Arts Caucus

Obama and the arts

Problems Persist, but the N.E.A. and Cultural Groups See Progress Under Obama
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, March 24, 2009

This land is iLAND

iLAND Symposium
Saturday, March 28th

iLAND will hold its first annual symposium in New York City, this Saturday:

Connecting to the Urban Environment: Creating embodied and relational approaches to environmental awareness

Saturday, March 28
9:30am-1pm (no charge, registration opens at 9am)
Refreshments will be served.

Eugene Lang College
The New School for Liberal Arts
6 East 16th Street, Manhattan
Room #D1009 (auditorium)

Connecting to the Urban Environment, iLAND's first annual symposium, will address issues emanating from the creative collaborations of past iLAB residencies. iLAB alumni will be paired with representatives from environmental organizations who are actively designing new relationships to urban space. Presentations will share the results of grappling with the project of finding shared language and processes across the arts and sciences while centering dance and the body as the mediator and resource for experience, imagination and knowing. The symposium will include oral and media presentations, workshops, and small-group discussions.

Symposium information

iLand Web site

iLand on Facebook

Barnett's "Sound Memory"

Choreographer Julian Barnett--who recently joined me for an episode of the Body and Soul podcast--concludes the presentation of Sound Memory tonight at Danspace Project (8:30pm). The dancers--Barnett, Justin Ternullo and Hanna Kivioja--perform to an audio score from right-wing radio and old cassette tapes of hit songs and classical samples. A floor strewn with music tapes becomes a field of scattered associations and shards of the self. The dancers' bare feet somehow manage to avoid slippage and damage as impulsive and rough (sometimes roughhouse) movement speaks of raw, twisty, unresolved and perhaps unresolvable questions. The piece feels un-ironed in ways that can be, by turns, frustrating, amusing and bracing. By putting a check on your need for order, for meaning, you can begin to feel into Sound Memory and make room for a moment out of (your) control.

Information and ticketing at Danspace Project

Listen to Julian Barnett on Body and Soul podcast.

Able and then some

Heidi Latsky Dance's GIMP--previewed on a recent Body and Soul podcast--opened last night at Abrons Arts Center. Latsky's dancers, who span a range of physical abilities and disabilities as well as experience with dance, underscore the grand in Grand Street, the theater's Lower East Side location. The 75-minute show might benefit from some tightening to better frame and highlight its lovely sensuality, knock-out eroticism and forthright attitude. That's everything these performers deserve, and I am certain that they will continue to inspire and challenge Latsky.

Continuing tonight and closing tomorrow night: Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt); 212-598-0400

Click here for further information: The Gimp Project.

************************************************************************

Ping Chong & Company's inside/out...voices from the disability community

At Latsky's show, I found out about this performance piece, which starts tonight: oral-history theater from the disability community (part of Chong's Undesirable Elements project). To hear audio clips of the cast, click here.

Friday and Saturday, March 20-21, 7:30pm

TheTimesCenter Stage
242 West 41st Street

Tickets or call 1-866-468-7619

Baldwin's "Bear Crown" at DTW

Congratulations to Body and Soul interviewee Ivy Baldwin and her creative team upon the successful opening night of Bear Crown at Dance Theater Workshop. Running 55 minutes, the piece dreams up an environment of open, luminous structure with pockets of wit, mystery and danger. Derived from many experiences and serendipities, it all means--to you--whatever you glean from and project upon it. The cast includes Anna Carapetyan (a new member of the troupe) and longtime collaborative performers Lawrence Cassella, Mindy Nelson and Katie Workum. Lighting designer Chloë Z Brown and sound designer Justin Jones are each on top of their game, and their magical work for this piece will be long remembered.

Bear Crown runs through this Saturday at 7:30pm.

Schedule and ticketing at Dance Theater Workshop

Listen to Ivy Baldwin on Body and Soul podcast.

Finally! Aisles!

Koch Theater at Lincoln Center to Add Aisles in Orchestra Section
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, March 18, 2009

King Glover: The reign in Spain

The Joyce Theater curtain comes up on Savion Glover's SoLo in TIME, and--blam!--there he is, up on his tap floor, tapping away. Right away. In your face. On a stage rendered as stark and intimate as a tiny, dark, smoky nightclub.

Everything about this says, "Let's get back to basics and down to business." And I say, the man is working. Let the man work.

SoLo in Time does have the expected Glovericious arc of musical exploration, though. I really didn't care for Glover's move into classical beats, Classical Savion, a few years back. Looked and sounded like oil and water to me and very unnecessary, though others--touched by the stellar hoofer's interest in Western classical music, I guess--embraced it.

Others might not fully grasp his new flirtation with flamenco in SoLo in Time, but I dig it. It's a more felicitous affair, flamenco itself is all about blended cultural currents--and groovy ones at that--and Glover seems more at home. He has absorbed much about flamenco's presentation and percussion, and his knowledge is well displayed by his engagement with collaborating artists--flamenco singer/dancer La Conja, flamenco guitarist Arturo Martinez, percussionist Carmen Estevez and the foxy bassist Andy McCloud. Fellow dancers Marshall Davis, Jr. and Cartier Williams provide backup when not gorgeously rocking out themselves.

Aggressive. Secure. Joyous. This is the Savion we love to see. His footwork, sharp and sweet and unbelievable. How the hell does he get those sounds?

Best of all, although doing the crosscultural thing so popular with tappers these days, he does not pander to his audience. He expects us to be schooled in flamenco ways and tap ways and to keep up our end of the bargain. Keep up with him.

Tall order? Well, here's a moment that will really challenge the best of you: Towards the end of the show, La Conja and the musicians form a loose circle while Glover--tucked to the side--faces the back of the stage and throws down. (All I could see, basically, was the bobbing of dreadlocks.) You can hear him, but what he's doing doesn't seem to have much relationship to what anyone else has on his or her mind. Has he forgotten them? Forgotten us?

Okay, kids! What's going on here? Listen up!

Everyone's holding the space for Glover, holding it nice and steady and safe, so that he can do his trance dance. For the moment--now, don't freak out folks; it's going to be okay--he's gone. Glover's gone. And we can't follow him. And we should respect and allow him his prayer space.

I think he has gone to the land of the ancestors. To forebears like Hines and Condos and Slyde.

We don't get to see his adorable, gleaming face because this moment is not about us.

What's cool here is that you can hear the exact moment when something breaks, his feet slow down and he's coming back. Soon after that, he turns his dancing sideways--his often-favored position on stage--and faces La Conja and looks out to her and to this world, interested and engaged again.

SoLo in TIME ends this coming Sunday. Contact the Joyce quick!

New Rochelle makes space for artists

New Rochelle Creates Affordable Space for Artists
by Juli S. Charkes, The New York Times, March 12, 2009

Internship position at NDA

New Dance Alliance seeks intern for Administrative Assistant position. You can make your schedule.  Please e-mail us your interests and resume:

Karen Bernard at kb@newdancealliance.org.  Subject: Intern

New Dance Alliance (NDA) is a grass-roots non-profit organization located in New York City in downtown Manhattan.  NDA supports experimental choreographers and interdisciplianary performance through
the Performance Mix Festival and year round support services.

New Dance Alliance Web site

Elizabeth Gilbert on creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity
TED Talks

Julian Barnett: Body and Soul podcast

Danspace Project will present Sound Memory--a full-evening world premiere by the talented young dancer-choreographer Julian Barnett. Barnett joins me to talk about this work, inspired by the influence of old audio technology--music cassette tapes--on memory and imagination.

Sound Memory at Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Thursday-Saturday, 8:30pm.

Schedule and ticketing information or 866-811-4111

Julian Barnett Web site

Dance critic and blogger Apollinaire Scherr's essay on a preview of Sound Memory can be found here.

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Zuŝtiak: at home in the funhouse

Lindsey Dietz Marchant (left) and Elena Demyanenko

of Pavel Zuŝtiak/Palissimo
in Zuŝtiak's Weddings and Beheadings
(Photo: Julie Lemberger for the 92nd Street Y)

You're already a habitant of Pavel Zuŝtiak's Mardi Gras funhouse. By the time his new work--Weddings and Beheadings--reveals its solemn, surprise ending, you probably won't need that fact to be made plain. You're human, he's had his eyes on you, and you can feel it.

In this sprawling, 80-minute piece, Zuŝtiak animates a yin/yang of male and female, light and darkness, grace and awkwardness, tenderness and aggression, pleasure and fear, the theatrical and the genuine, the clothed and the unclothed, the corporeal and the ghostly, presence and absence, present and past. The way in which yin slips around the base of yang, the way they swirl together and lock into one entity, reflects how this dance-theater work presents a startling palette of opposites.

Shifting, evolving images--some very old found portrait photos, shots of the dancers and x-rays--are projected onto a scrim, the backdrop and other surfaces. The performers--when not stark, raving nude, which is often--make numerous costume and identity changes. Joe Levasseur's lighting environment creates alternating and disturbing feelings of intimacy and distance, the mysterious and the mundane. Zuŝtiak's sound design marches against the ear and nerves. Some action strays into the margins of the stage, and we follow, sneaking peeks there before returning our gaze to the main event.

Sho Ikushima (left) and Jeff Kent Jacobs
(Photo: Julie Lemberger for the 92nd Street Y)

Elena Demyanenko, Sho Ikushima, Jeff Kent Jacobs and Lindsey Dietz Marchant--an amazing cast--help pull together this jumble of theatrical elements, this ambiguity of mood, motion and meaning. Watch, especially, for smoothly-rendered duets between the men and for the way that Dietz Marchant always appears to be suspended in dark space, even when there's light all around her, straining against balance, active and complex within her waiting.

Zuŝtiak's other fine collaborators include Robert Flynt (projections concept and images); Keith Skretch (projections design and animation) and Nick Vaughn (set and costumes).

A presentation of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, Weddings and Beheadings continues its run Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm at the Ailey Citigroup Theater at the Joan Weill Center for Dance, 405 West 55th Street at 9th Avenue.

Click here for ticketing information.

Ivy Baldwin: Body and Soul podcast

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Ivy Baldwin Dance premieres Bear Crown at Dance Theater Workshop next week, March 18-21. Baldwin's dance-theater aesthetic immerses viewers in mysterious environments with an aura of darkness and twisted humor.

Wednesday-Saturday, March 18-21, 7:30pm. Post-show talk with Heather Olson (3/18). Pre-show coffee & conversation with Sara Nash (3/19 at 6:30pm). 10th Anniversary Benefit Gala performance and party (3/19).

Schedule and ticketing details

Ivy Baldwin Dance site

Special note: Justin Jones's Minneapolis-based dance podcast--Talk Dance MPLS--is available through iTunes.

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

MP3 File

Economic crisis hits Governors Isle plans

Warning of Lack of Money to Manage Governors Island
by Charles V. Bagli, The New York Times, March 12, 2009

Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World

The A-Word Reclaimed
How performance art can change the way Americans identify with the Arab world
by Saaret E. Yoseph, The Root, March 9, 2009

The Turning World (86)

As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero
by Richard Pérez-Peña, The New York Times, March 11, 2009

Heidi Latsky: Body and Soul podcast

Dancer-choreographer Heidi Latsky presents the New York City premiere of GIMP--a full-throttle, passionate ensemble work that expands expectations and perceptions of the body, disability and performance.

Thursday-Saturday, March 19-21, 8pm.

Opening night reception honors The Wounded Warrior Project.

Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt); 212-598-0400

Click here for further information: The Gimp Project.

Boston premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art, April 24-25

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

MP3 File

Goldberg's rhythm & schmooze at Hue-Man

Meet Jane Goldberg, author of Shoot Me While I'm Happy, the memoir about life among tap's great performers.

Friday, March 13, 6-8 PM
Hue-Man Bookstore and Cafe
2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd. between 124th and 125th Street, Manhattan (The A Train!)
Click for map and directions

Top Cunningham dancers will lose their jobs

Merce Cunningham Will Let Three Senior Dancers Go
by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, March 10, 2009

UBW's Summer Leadership Institute

Urban Bush Women's 2009 Summer Leadership Institute will be held in New Orleans where UBW seeks to contribute to the city's re-building effort in partnership with local artists and activists including the 7th Ward Neighborhood Center, ArtSpot Productions, Junebug Productions, The People's Institute for Survival & Beyond, and representatives of the Tulane, Xavier, Dillard and UNO communities (Team NOLA).

The title for the Institute, Soul Deep: A New Artist for a Renewed Society, references two important American writers: Langston Hughes ("my soul has grown deep like the rivers") and W.E.B. DuBois (A New Negro for a New Society). With a focus on issues of community health, our primary purpose will be to serve as a catalyst for the renewal, sustenance and growth of the artistic and cultural organizing communities of New Orleans.

Click here to apply to the 2009 Summer Leadership Institute.

Partners in love and art

Craving some uplift in this season of lack and dread? Spend some time with Carmen & Geoffrey--that would be that regal couple, Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder--in a generous, charming documentary directed by Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob. It opens this Friday at Manhattan's Quad Cinema for a six-day run.

What I most love about this film is not its behind-scenes peeks at the creative process, or its gentle intertwining of personal histories with the story and major personalities of modern dance and popular entertainment in America. I most treasure the filmmakers' calm but direct insight into what it took for these gifted artists to rise, in a racist society, to the summit of their professions.

I'm moved by the young Holder's headstrong determination to push past dyslexia and express a whole range of artistic talents--dance, visual arts, music and more. It makes me sit up a bit taller when I recognize (and identify with) the haughty Caribbean-ness of something Holder told John Lahr: "I walk through doors. If I'm not wanted in a place, there's something wrong with the place, not me." For her part, de Lavallade, remembering their friendship with Josephine Baker, remarks, "You learn from people who are not afraid of who they are." (Yeah, you're right!) And so, we can learn from these fabulous two: how an artist crafts a world of his own from what ever comes to hand; how respect and reverence and everyday friendship help a marriage last over half a century; how to conquer by vision, self-discipline, love and generosity.

***************************

CARMEN AND GEOFFREY
Directed by Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob
Distributed by First Run Features

80 minutes, color; 2006

with: Carmen de Lavallade; Geoffrey Holder; Boscoe Holder; Leo Holder; Gus Solomons jr; Dudley Williams; Judith Jamison; Jennifer Dunning; Alvin Ailey; Josephine Baker

Quad Cinema -- March 13-18, 2009
34 West 13th Street, Manhattan
212-255-8800

An intimate look at two extraordinary personalities, Carmen De Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, married fifty-three years. De Lavallade, a legendary dancer and choreographer whose career began in California, came to New York with Alvin Ailey, performing as a soloist with his company and as a ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera. Holder, a 6'6" "gentle giant" from Trinidad, has worked as a Broadway dancer, actor, director, choreographer, costume and set designer, painter and musician, winning a Tony Award for directing "The Wiz."

"More than an outstanding, five-decade creative collaboration," says Dance Magazine, CARMEN AND GEOFFREY which had its premiere with DFA's Dance on Camera Festival co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, tells "one of the dance world's great love stories." Atkinson's film, shot over three years, explores this romantic and creative partnership. Containing rare dance footage from the 50's and 60's, featuring Alvin Ailey, Herbert Ross, Lester Horton, Joe Layton, Duke Ellington and Josephine Baker in Paris, among others, the film also features contemporary works, including Carmen's on-going partnership with Gus Solomons, Jr and Dudley Williams.

Filmmaker Linda Atkinson first met Carmen and Geoffrey while studying acting at the Yale School of Drama. She graduated with an MFA, having won the Carol Dye Acting Prize, and has since performed at theatres around the country. Working with her husband, Nick Doob, she produced a prize-winning series of health-related documentaries for high school students. She has recently directed an original play, FINEPRINT, at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. She is currently producing a film based on Robert Coles's "Women of Crisis."

Nick Doob has been a director, cinematographer and editor on numerous award-winning films. He has shot four Oscar-nominated films including FROM MAO TO MOZART, which won an Oscar. He directed DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, and ELAINE STRITCH AT LIBERTY, which won an Emmy. In 2000 he won an Emmy as a producer on AMERICAN HIGH, the acclaimed verité TV series. For HBO he co-directed A BOY'S LIFE with Rory Kennedy, and is currently directing and producing a film about Alzheimer's Disease for HBO.

Dancing for the Camera

Submit your film and video dance for American Dance Festival's 14th Annual Dancing for the Camera (June 26-28 at Duke University).

Categories:

Choreography for the camera
Documentaries
Experimental and digital technologies
Student work.

Click here for more details or write to adf@americandancefestival.org.

Early deadline: March 24, 6pm, with a $30 entry fee.
Final submission deadline: April 24, 6pm. The entry fee for late submissions is $40.

New from "America's Most Persistent Dancer"

more "off the hook" disability dancing : )
by Amanda Vallo, Monday Morning News, March 9, 2009

My buddy, A-lo, with some new choreography. Love the tune and the wave!

Yoga and dancing pornographic?

Bali Defies Fatwa on Yoga
by Peter Gelling, The New York Times, March 10, 2009

Misha: Photography his way

Merce My Way--the new book of photographs of Merce Cunningham's dancers in action by Mikhail Baryshnikov--has just come my way. To look at these 85 creatively-blurred shots is to be fed swirls, swoops and great bursts of color energy as these two brilliant masters of motion (physical and visual) come together. This volume of wind, ice and fire, platinum and hot gold, plunges us deep inside time in a way that is both spiritual and disorienting. Baryshnikov's homage to Cunningham is more than a record of dancing; he offers an experience of dance and its power to shake, entrance and exalt the viewer.

Two quotes from Baryshnikov's introduction:

"Merce's work lends itself beautifully to the lens. He uses space--his depth of field, so to speak--unlike any other choreographer in the world. He uses his dances as the perfect instrument of his vision."

"Sometimes Merce's work is interpreted as cold and withholding, but I completely disagree with that notion. I've always thought that his best pieces were highly emotional, and I've tried to capture that emotion in these photographs."

Yes, the "internal temperature," the "heat," that the photographer seeks is there. What a beauty of a book.

Hear Mikhail Baryshnikov in conversation with New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella at Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Center (1972 Broadway at 66th Street, Lincoln Triangle) on Tuesday, March 10, 7:30pm, followed by a book-signing.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, a photographer most of his adult life, has turned his lens on dance, and here pays vibrant homage to the work of master choreographer Merce Cunningham. In his introduction to Merce My Way Baryshnikov writes, “Watching Cunningham's dances through the eye of a lens is a lesson in the extremes and restraints of a dancer's body... to a dancer, such nakedness is revelatory." This volume offers 85 of Baryshnikov's striking, never-before-published color images, in which he seizes the essence of Cunningham's choreography by anticipating the dancers' motions and capturing the streaming fluidity of the dance. His images are radiant and electric--blurring motion, past, present and future into a single frame. Featuring images of six recent Cunningham dances, the book is a revelation for all those who revere dance--and the work of these two masters.

Riga-born Mikhail Baryshnikov danced with the Kirov Ballet from 1968 to 1974, when he left Russia. He joined New York City Ballet as a principal dancer in 1979 and in 1980 became the artistic director of American Ballet Theater, a post he held until 1990. Thereafter, until 2002, Mr. Baryshnikov was director and dancer with The White Oak Dance Project, which he co-founded with choreographer Mark Morris. He has also starred in several films and has worked in television and on Broadway, earning Oscar and Tony nominations. Mr. Baryshnikov began taking photographs as an avocation in the mid-80s, and since then, his photographs have been exhibited in a variety of museums and galleries all over the world. He is currently artistic director of New York City’s Baryshnikov Arts Center, which serves as a creative laboratory and meeting place for artists of all disciplines.

PUBLISHED BY: Baryshnikov Productions
FORMAT: Clth, 11 x 9.75 in. / 128 pgs / 177 color.
ISBN: 9780982172605 ISBN10: 0982172605
PUBLICATION DATE: 02/01/2009
$45.00

Dancing on the Ceiling: Music and the Brain

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, March 14, 2009 at 2:30pm
at
The Philoctetes Center
247 East 82nd Street
(Phone: 646-422-0544; email: info@philoctetes.org)

Dancing on the Ceiling:
Music and the Brain

"Music is among the defining features of human culture, playing a central role in every society known to Western scholars. However, from the standpoint of evolution, music is also one of the most mysterious of human behaviors, as it serves no obvious function that might have driven its evolution." -Josh McDermott, M. Hauser

Advances in neuroscientific techniques, such as fMRI, have enabled researchers to better understand the parts of the brain that are involved in thought processes, in particular those related to the emotions released by creative and esthetic acitivities. This roundtable will explore music in relation to brain function in an effort to understand the evolution of music and its possible role as a precursor to language. The panel will address a number of related questions: how music communicates feeling and why the emotions it generates make us feel so good; why we like some music and not other music; why some music is inextricably connected to physical body movement; how music can induce meditative states of consciousness; what relationships exist between the perception of music and language in the mind; and what musicians can tell us about their state of mind when they perform, compose, or improvise. Five professionals from different disciplines—a neuroscientist, a psychoanalyst, an Arabic musician and scholar, a sound engineer, and a jazz saxophonist/composer—come together to talk about these questions and more.

Jim Anderson is an internationally recognized recording engineer and producer of acoustic music for the recording, radio, television, and film industries. His recordings have received nine Grammy awards and 25 Grammy nominations. His radio recordings have received two George Foster Peabody Awards and he has received two Emmy nominations for television programs. A graduate of the Duquesne University School of Music in Pittsburgh PA, Jim studied audio engineering at the Eastman School of Music and Sender Freies Berlin. In the 1970s, he was employed by National Public Radio and engineered and produced many award-winning classical, jazz, documentary, and news programs. Since 1980 Jim has had a career as an independent audio engineer and producer. He has been a lecturer and master-class guest faculty member at the Berklee College of Music, The New England Institute of Art, McGill University, The Banff Centre, Universite de Kunst in Berlin, University of Luleå in Sweden, the New School University, University of Georgia, and Penn State University. He is a professor and former chair of the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is the President of the Audio Engineering Society, 2008-2009.

Taoufiq Ben Amor was born in Tunis to a Sufi Family of the Qadiri order. With a musician father, he learned percussion and singing at a young age. Two decades ago, he started learning the Oud and the Arabic Maqam system with Mohammed Labbad, Jamal Aslan, Simon Shaheen and the Rashidiyya School of Andalusian music. He is an active music performer, educator and producer. Taoufiq Ben Amor is currently Senior lecturer in Arabic Studies at Columbia University. Some of his topics of research include, "Beur Rap in Paris: Language and Identity among young French-Maghrebian musicians;" "The Making of Tradition: Standardization of the Lyrics of the Tunisian Andalusian Malouf;" "The Politics of Language: Formalization of the Iraqi Maqam 1960-Present;" "Code-switching in Rai Music;" "Turning Point: Tarab as a Doorway to the Sufi Experience of the Divine;" and “Standardization and Colloquialization in Andalusian and Maghrebian Music Genres.”

Jane Ira Bloom is a soprano saxophonist, composer, and a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz. She is the winner of the 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition, the 2007 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award for lifetime service to jazz, the Jazz Journalists Association Award and the Downbeat International Critics Poll for soprano saxophone, and the Charlie Parker Fellowship for jazz innovation. Bloom was the first musician commissioned by the NASA Art Program and has an asteroid named in her honor by the International Astronomical Union. She has received numerous commissions and has composed for the American Composers Orchestra, the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the Pilobolus Dance Theater integrating jazz performers in new settings. She has recorded and produced 13 albums of her music and holds degrees from Yale University and the Yale School of Music. Bloom is currently on the faculty of the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music in NYC. Her latest release is the award-winning CD, Mental Weather.

Josh McDermott recently joined the Center for Neural Science at NYU as a postdoctoral researcher. He studies sound and hearing, conducting experiments on humans and designing computational audio algorithms. He has longstanding research interests in music perception and cognition. Earlier in life he spent his free time DJing in clubs and on the radio, and to this day remains an avid collector of vinyl records. His scientific interests in music focus on understanding how musical structures are represented in the auditory system, and on what this can reveal about the origins of music.

Alexander Stein conducts a polymodal career as psychoanalyst, business consultant, author, journalist, teacher, and scholar. He is a member, training analyst, and supervisor of NPAP, and maintains clinical and business consulting practices in New York. A Principal of the Boswell Group LLC, a psychoanalytic consulting partnership, he advises business leaders and entrepreneurs. He also writes a monthly column for Fortune Small Business on the psychological dimensions of business and entrepreneurship. Drawing on his pre-psychoanalytic life as a conservatory-trained pianist, Stein writes and lectures extensively on the conjoined study of music and psychoanalysis. He is the author of numerous scholarly works that have been published in many of the leading peer-reviewed psychoanalytic journals, and is the author, most recently, of The Sound of Memory, which explores the formative influences of the early sound environment on psychological development. He recently delivered the Aaron Esman/Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar Lecture on Music at Weill Cornell Medical College, and is organizing a weekend conference entitled “Singing (and Writing) with Tongues of Wood” for New Directions in Psychoanalytic Thinking in Washington DC.

______________________

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

The Center would like to thank you again for your generous response to our appeal for support as we negotiate our future in light of the disappearance of our operating funds—the result of the mismanagement of assets by Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC. For more information about how you can help to sponsor the Philoctetes Center, please visit our Support page.

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 www.philoctetes.org for more information.

While I was away...

When you've had very little (and unreliable) access to the 'Net, catching up with nearly three weeks of dance-related news (just for starters) is quite a task. Here's a handful of notable items culled from The New York Times, just in case you happened to miss these, too.

Gerald Myers, 85, Writer on Dance and Philosophy, Dies by William Grimes, February 23

New Punch in an Old tale as a Trickster Reappears by Claudia La Rocco, February 27 (I'm including this since my pile of email messages reveals quite a bit of raving about this work, and I regret missing it. Damn nicely-done review, too.)

Pearl Lang, Dancer and Choreographer, Dies at 87 by Jack Anderson, February 27

For a Dancer Making His Way, It's All Tap, All Day by Tammy La Gorge, March 1

Bigger Woes for Library, as a Buyer Backs Out by Robin Pogrebin, March 4 (not dance-related, specifically, but...you know.)

Dancing With the Average Folk by David McKay Wilson, March 8, 2009

Eva's Book Club (3)

Dance folks, what are you reading?

Latest on my nightstand:

The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003)
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the culture of slavery. Highly recommended.

Just completed:

The Accidental Masterpiece: On The Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman (The Penguin Press, 2005)

Magic Power Language Symbol: A Magician's Exploration of Linguistics by Patrick Dunn (Llewellyn Worldwide, 2008)

Use the Comments feature to tell us what you're reading!

"A.W.A.R.D." now more rewarding!

The A.W.A.R.D. Show! has expanded into a national format, with a series taking place in New York City (Joyce SoHo), Chicago (The Dance Center), Philadelphia (Live Arts festival) and Seattle (On the Boards). The first place winner in each city receives a $10,000 award to be used toward the creation of a new dance work. Each of two runners-up in each city receive $1,000.

Founded by Neta Pulvermacher, The A.W.A.R.D. Show! was created in response to a need for a lab-like space in which working dance artists can engage in an open dialogue with the audience about their work. It is dedicated to nurturing new work, discussion, exploration, creativity and to the free exchange of ideas, thoughts and opinions.

Applications are currently being accepted for this exciting opportunity for dance artists around the country. The deadline for submitting applications is Tuesday, March 31.

For more information and an application for each of the four cities, click here.

American Dance Guild's call for choreography

American Dance Guild (ADG) invites applications from contemporary dance artists of diverse backgrounds, ages and aesthetics throughout the United States and internationally for its 2009 Performance Festival (September 10-13, 2009):

We are very excited to be holding our festival at the beautiful new Manhattan Movement Arts Theater located at 248 West 60th Street in New York City. This is a terrific space -- 32' x32' performance area, high ceilings, and an audience capacity of 170. Four different programs will be presented during the festival.

For an application, click here (deadline: March 30).

ADG is dedicated to presenting the range and diversity of expression in current dance art practice and how it interfaces with our historical modern dance roots. Last year, we featured work by Murray Louis and Anna Sokolow.

This year we will be featuring work by Donald McKayle and Erick Hawkins (celebrating his 100th birthday.) Our theme this year will be Influence and Innovation.

If you applied in the past and were not accepted, PLEASE apply again!

For questions, contact Tina Croll at tina@horsesmouth.org or Gloria McLean at gloria.mclean@americandanceguild.org.

Making dance is an inside job

Dollars and Sensibility: "It Topples Fast"
by Daria Faïn, Movement Research Performance Journal, mid-winter to summer, 1996

"The translation of cash in French, is “liquide” or “espece” (liquid or species) It’s liquid. You cannot grasp it."

"For me, money is a form of energy that challenges circulation and dynamic. In our necessities to encounter society, money is an everyday current of exchange. It is good to keep it that way. The use of money may define a way of living."

Dancer Levi Gonzalez suggested a revisiting of this MRPJ essay on money, culture, community and the interior, bony structure of dance by choreographer Daria Faïn. Read more here.

The beat does not go on

Hey, there.

I've just returned to New York and the news that my colleague (and first Dance Magazine editor) Tobi Tobias has just lost her paying gig at cost-cutting Bloomberg News.

Sigh...

Two recent reviews by Tobi, originally posted to Bloomberg News and re-posted to her ArtsJournal blog, Seeing Things:

Paul Taylor Celebrates Walt Whitman on Life, Love
March 6, 2009

Murdered Reporter Pearl Evoked in 'Daniel' Dance
February 26, 2009