Lost and found at Danspace

Hello, out there! Yes, it's me again, wearing my dance blogger hat and getting pushy with you.

Today, I'm pointing you in the direction of Danspace Project and hoping you'll get there tonight or tomorrow night for the latest offering in the Platforms 2010: i get lost series, curated by Ralph Lemon.

i get lost: An Evening of Solos presents two 30-minute works by Judith Sánchez Ruíz (And They Forgot to Love) and Souleymane Badolo (Yaado), and if you crave the chance to spend time with singular, compelling performers, you'll want to make tracks.

Also, watching Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo last night, I came away with a much clearer idea of what Judy Hussie-Taylor (Danspace's Executive Director) intends to do with her Platforms initiative. From what I've seen thus far (David Zambrano, Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo, even the recent screening of Maya Deren's raw footage of voudon dancing in Haiti), it's evident that Lemon and Hussie-Taylor want to open out the way we look at mediated dancing, dance presented in a concert space or via media. Platforms proposes a shift of the paradigm that demands and privileges well-made, finished product--every detail of it stamped and controlled and often blown up to impress funders, presenters and a dazzlement-craving market.

But there's no flashback to Judson in this. Yes, we can have glamour, glitter, the drama of real human context and humanity in its splendid diversity. But we can also, in the instance of Sánchez Ruíz and Badolo, have soloists who don't seek to dominate the space--and, as a performance venue, St. Mark's sanctuary is, oddly, both intimate and formidable--but, rather, seek to draw you into the luminous physical and mental sectors that they occupy. They experiment with ways to make us look more closely, see more and see it more sharply.

A work of art is an invitation to a conversation. A conversation can start anywhere and go anywhere--live, unscripted, responsive in the moment. I understand that more now through i get lost. Badolo's solo, Yaado, underscores these truths by starting out with the dancer standing before us, in utmost simplicity and dignity, saying "Je suis Souleymane Badolo..." If someone introduces himself to you, unless there's something wrong, you're going to step into that space he's offering, open up and respond in kind. Can we get that that's what could/should be going on when we encounter a work of art?

Both solos here remind me of that (sometimes annoying) question: Would you rather be right or happy? As I see it, neither choreographer has put forth a piece meant to be earthshaking or satisfying in that mind-fattening way that makes dance critics snap their pens and notebooks closed and declare that it has met all the right requirements for being good. i get lost--as I see it--is not about being right but about being willingly and happily engaged in sharing something interesting in conversation. There's no need to be right--to snap a statement and tuck it away.

Now, let's see if critics can get that.

The conversation continues. Click here.