The great (crocheted) reef

How to Crochet a Coral Reef

by Jess Righthand, Smithsonian.com, December 2010

Happy New Year and thank you!

New Mexico sky (c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life....You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist’s nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.

-- Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

Billy Taylor, 89

Billy Taylor, Jazz Pianist and Educator, Dies at 89
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, December 29, 2010

Taymor withdraws from NY Times forum

Julie Taymor Withdraws From New York Times Event

by Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times, December 29, 2010

Oy to the world: "Baby Universe"

What if some remnant of human civilization were to survive way, way, way into the future only to face the imminent death of our solar system? That's the premise of theater troupe Wakka Wakka's Baby Universe (A Puppet Odyssey), running now at Baruch Performing Arts Center through January 9.

Not your standard holiday season fare, for sure, and not intended for very young kids. (A program note advises parents refrain from bringing children under 7.) With a tone that varies from sardonic to poignant, from apocalyptic to bittersweet, Baby Universe is the stuff of environmental nightmares. This mythic sci-fi tale is enacted by dozens of puppets (created by Wakka Wakka's Kirjan Waage) ranging from the very tiny to the larger-than-life and very scary.

With the lurching, dying Sun bearing down on its planets, we find Earth gravely ill, her inhabitants sheltering in bunkers, eating one another and mourning the loss of the natural world. Earth is in line to die along with her neighbors who passively resign themselves to their fate, even seem to welcome it. Closest to the Sun, poor Mercury--soon to come out of retrograde, btw, just as a note to you astrology fans--becomes crazed with heat. The Moon's desperate loyalty to the Sun nearly leads to disastrous ends.

Meanwhile, Earth's scientists experiment with developing numerous "baby universes," hoping to create one that will form a new solar system with an Earth-like planet to house Earth's refugees. Raised by spinsters--puppets clad in white habits with halo-like disks on their heads--these babes don't always make it. But one--#7001--ah! That's the one. Bug-eyed, mewling, jet black as deep space and speckled with tiny stars, he's a feisty brat. And a good thing, too. He's got the whole world riding on his shoulders.

Will 7001 make it? Will he survive and expand and create a new home for humankind?

Directed by Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock
Written by Waage and Warnock with the Baby Universe Ensemble, which also includes Melissa Creighton, Andrew Manjuck and Peter Russo

Schedule of remaining performances
Ticket information online or 212-352-3101

Baruch Performing Arts Center
Baruch College
55 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan (map/directions)
(Enter on 25th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenues)

InfiniteBody Honor Roll 2010

And now, as we close out this year, here's a fond, informal tip o' the hat to arts events I most enjoyed in 2010:

@ Urban Bush Women -- Zollar: Uncensored -- at Dance Theater Workshop

@ Katherine Longstreth -- solos and duets -- Soaking WET series at West End Theater; dancers Kelly Bartnik and Diane Vivona

@ David Zambrano -- Soul Project -- Danspace Project; dancers Edivaldo Ernesto, Nina Fajdiga, Milan Herich, Peter Jasko, Horacio Macuacua and David Zambrano; costume designer Mat Voorter in collaboration with Pepa Martinez (Taller Trece) and Platform 2010 curator Ralph Lemon

@ Gotham Chamber Opera -- Il mondo della luna -- at Hayden Planetarium; special mention: director Diane Paulus, costume designer Anka Lupes, video and production designer Philip Bussmann, artistic director/conductor Neal Goren. And the cast, in particular, Nicholas Coppollo (Ecclitico) and Marco Nisticò (Buonafede)

@ Rocio Molina in NY Flamenco Festsival at NY City Center

@ Tino Sehgal at Guggenheim Museum

@ Giulia Murredu in Bava at Dance New Amsterdam; puppet design by Ulrike Quade

@ Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion--The Radio Show at Danspace Project; choreography by Abraham in collaboration with Abraham.In.Motion; outstanding company, including Kyle Abraham, Maureen Damaso, Samantha Farrow, Raja Feather Kelly, Jeremy Nedd, Amber Lee Parker and Rachelle Rafailedes; music arrangement by Kyle Abraham; costume design by Sarah Cubbage; lighting design by Dan Scully

@ The New Group's production of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind at The Acorn Theater; actors: Keith Carradine, Laurie Metcalf, Alessandro Nivola, Marin Ireland, Maggie Siff, Josh Hamilton, Frank Whaley, Karen Young; Ethan Hawke (directing); Derek McLane (sets); Jeff Croiter (lights); Gaines (music)

@ William Kentridge -- The Nose -- Metropolitan Opera; Paulo Szot as Kovalyov

@ Faye Driscoll--There is so much mad in me--Dance Theater Workshop; Driscoll, dancers and entire production team

@ Sankai Juku -- Kara*Mi -- Theatre de la Ville, Paris; entire production

@ SITI Co.--bobrauschenbergamerica--Dance Theater Workshop; entire production

@ Witness Relocation--Five Days in March--La MaMa E.T.C.; entire production

@ Emeline Michel, Buyu Ambroise and Pauline Jean at Rubenstein Atrium, Lincoln Center

@ Nora Chipaumire and Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited--lions will roar, swans will fly, angels will wrestle heaven, rains will break: gukurahundi--at Kumble Theater, LIU; entire production, including co-dancer Souleymane Badolo, video designer Romain Tardy and lighting designers Olivier Clausse dit Maurice and Joe W. Novak, costume designer Naoko Nagata

@James Thiérrée/Compagnie du Hanneton--Raoul--BAM Harvey (Next Wave Festival); costume, animal design and fabrication by Victoria Thiérrée

@The Joyce Theater for programming: Camille A. Brown, Andrea Miller, Kate Weare and Monica Bill Barnes

@Camille A. Brown -- choreography and performance at The Joyce Theater; company of Camille A. Brown

@Andrea Miller -- choreography, Wonderland; company: Gallim Dance at The Joyce Theater

@Kate Weare -- choreography; dancing: Adrian Clark; Douglas Gillespie, Leslie Kraus, Marlena Penney Oden; Live music performance: The Crooked Jades, in particular, vocalists/musicians Jeff Kazor and Lisa Berman; at The Joyce Theater

@Monica Bill Barnes -- choreography and performance; company performance: Anna Bass, Charlotte Bydwell and Celia Rowlson-Hall; at The Joyce Theater

@Sarah A.O. Rosner and her ensemble, The A.O. Movement Collective at Joyce SoHo--90 ways to Wake from drowning

@The Chocolate Factory for Brian Rogers and Madeline Best--Selective Memory

@Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder in smithsoniansmith at Dixon Place

@Andrew Dinwiddie's Get Mad at Sin! at The Chocolate Factory

@Elizabeth Ashley and Brian Murray in Edward Albee's Me,Myself & I at Playwrights Horizons

@Larissa Velez-Jackson, Larissa Velez Performance Company at Danspace Project in Holy Now! and Making Ends Meet (September 23-25)

@The Tempest -- Julie Taymor; Helen Mirren as Prospera

@The Social Network -- David Fincher; Alan Sorkin; cinematographer(s); acting ensemble

@Pina Bausch's Vollmond (2006), Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, BAM 2010 Next Wave Festival

@Patricia Hoffbauer and team -- Para-dice (Stage 1) at Danspace Project, Platform 2010: certain difficulties, certain joy. Special mention: Peggy Gould (dance), George Emilio Sanchez (text)

@Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper and Ishmael Houston-Jones -- revival of THEM (1986) at PS 122

@Leilah Boukhrim's work-in-progress showing at 92nd Street Y--Traces--and performance of Bahram Ji (vocals, santur)

@Denis O'Hare and Brendan Fraser in Elling

@Phantom Limb's The Fortune Teller (2006) at HERE Arts Center--entire production team

@Jack Ferver's Rumble Ghost at Performance Space 122

@Risa Jaroslow--The Partner Project/Scene in Public--at Danspace Project; core dancers: Luke Gutgsell, Elise Knudson, Rachel Lehrer and Paul Singh

@Jenifer Ringer of New York City Ballet, who danced her dance and spoke her truth (you go, girl!)

@Patti Smith for Just Kids and for just being Patti, still and always

@Aszure Barton's Busk at Baryshnikov Arts Center's Jerome Robbins Theater--choreography and dancers, especially Jonathan Emanuell Alsberry, Eric Beauchesne and Stephen Laks. Lev Zhurbin for music. Nicole Pearce for lighting

@John Kelly's Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte at La MaMa, entire production

@Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, curators, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

@Noche Flamenca at the Cherry Lane Theater; Martín Santangelo and company (choreography); Soledad Barrio, Juan Ogalla and Antonio Jiménez (dance); Salva de María and Eugenio Iglesias (music); Manuel Gago, Emilio Florido and Miguel Rosendo (singing); S. Benjamin Farrar and Christopher Thielking (lighting)

@Wakka Wakka's Baby Universe (A Puppet Odyssey) at Baruch Performing Arts Center; Kirjan Waage (puppets); writing and direction (Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock)

Skybetter's magical (dance) history tour

Dancer-choreographer Sydney Skybetter takes us on a whirlwind tour of dance history in this creative slide presentation.

From Medici to Jooss: Four Centuries of Crazy Incestuous Dance Action

View more presentations from Sydney Skybetter.

E. Gene Smith, champion of Tibet's literature, 74

E. Gene Smith, Guardian of the Tibetan Canon, Dies at 74
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, December 28, 2010

Turn off this musical

A Lead Actress Departs 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'

by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, December 28, 2010

Dancers, come out and play

Meet Loni Landon and Gregory Dolbashian, the young choreographers behind The Playground, an open forum for professional dancers. (Interviewed on Home4Dance)

Follow The Playground on Twitter at: theplaygroundny

Choreography or ELSE!

dance-techTV announces its new online performance series, Choreography or ELSE, featuring:

International choreographers, dance artist or directors that continue to challenge traditional and contextual notions of choreography. They problematize the performance of movement with their on-going experimentation with compositional and aesthetic strategies, dramaturgic approaches, non-conventional spaces, appropriating uses of the new technologies, crossing disciplinary boundaries and dwelling on cultural hybridity.

In this series, the bi-monthly broadcast of the selected works will be accompanied with the publication of rich media supporting material about that specific performance and choreographer such as: reviews, interviews, essays and other references.

The platform dance-tech.net will offer a interactive space of on-line dialogue with the featured artist.

The series will launch with While we were holding it together by Ivana Muller (Croatia/Holland/France) on January 8. The following three programs will be devoted to Mette Ingvarsten (Denmark), Gilles Jobin (Switzerland) and Tere O'Connor (USA).

The content will be globally available and featured for a month on dance-techTV. 

This project is only possible by the collaboration of the artists. 

Series artists (confirmed)

David Zambrano (Venezuela/Holland) 

Emio Greco | PC (Holland) 

Gilles Jobin (Switzerland) 

Ivana Muller (Croatia/Holland/France) 

Jose Navas (Venezuela/Canada) 

Kate Weare (Canada/USA) 

Kettly Noel (Mali) 

Mette Ingvarsten (Denmark) 

Milka Djordjevich and Dragana Bulut (Serbia/USA) 

Miguel Gutierrez (USA) 

La Ribot (Spain/Switzerland) 

Rachid Ouramdane (France) 

Radhuane El Meddeb (Tunisia/France) 

Roger Bernat (Spain) 

Sasa Asentic (Serbia) 

Sol Pico (Spain) 

Tamara Cubas (Uruguay)

Oliver Dubois (France) 

Tere O'Connor (USA) 

Yanira Castro (USA) 

and others!

For further information on dance-techTV and this series, click here or email marlon@dance-tech.net.

Vote for InfiniteBody now!

Vote for the Top Dance Blogs of 2010! | Dance Advantage

That's right! It's time, everybody! Go to the above link on the Dance Advantage site, and vote for your favorites from each of the various eligible categories.

Of course, I'm hoping you'll choose InfiniteBody in the Dance News and Criticism category. Also, please scroll further down and vote for InfiniteBody in the Top 20 list.

And, once again, thanks! Your participation and wonderful comments made IB a contender, and now it's got a shot at the top!

Eva :-)

She lived: Lucille Clifton remembered

The Lives They Lived
Words of Desire: A life of poetry and longing
by Daniel Bergner, The New York Times Magazine, December 26, 2010

That rumbling ghost...

Enough with the carols!

Click here for free downloads from Calder Kusmierski Singer's original score for Jack Ferver's Rumble Ghost, and read my December 9th review of the PS 122 production here.

New triumph for Barrio and Noche Flamenca

Martín Santangelo's Noche Flamenca, with master dancer Soledad Barrio in the lead, is acclaimed for its stripped-to-the-core vision of flamenco music, song and dance without trimmings, tricks or modernizing gimmickry of any kind. Best savored up close in small spaces, Santangelo's array of excellent performers have delighted New York audiences with annual visits to the East Village's Theater 80 St. Marks. This season, the current cast is brightening winter at the West Village's Cherry Lane Theatre in Esta Noche No Es Mi Día, now through January 12.

The sensuous poetry of Esta Noche No Es Mi Día arises from darkness. In the lead-in to Amanecer (Dawn), we cannot see the singers, but we hear them clapping, stamping, calling to one another as they proceed onto the little stage. This dramatic opening in the dark stirs the heart.

And then we see them--black-clad Manuel Gago, Emilio Florido and Miguel Rosendo beneath a faint, warm glow of light. One after another, they take up the cry, stretching and slanting the notes and telling their truths. The rhythm moves with an insistent if stately roll, holding both resilient dignity and the weight of the painful history of Andalucia. Santangelo has put gitano song front and center--and weaves the singers throughout the program's action--to remind us of the human cry as the fundamental channel of flamenco's soul.

Barrio enters, dressed in tomato-red satin ruffles and flanked by her guys--Juan Ogalla and Antonio Jiménez. Right away, you understand that this woman is in charge, all about business, no phony baloney. The intimacy of the Cherry Lane's low-rising, unadorned stage, with its red brick walls, fits the increasingly charismatic Barrio to a T. 

This season, her performing reveals more maturity, dramatic range and emotional openness than she has ever shown. Dancing the Alegrías (her choreography) with Ogalla, she alternately leans against him and tries to lock eyes with him, pouring meaning and chemistry through her facial expressions as if to try to pull this frequent high-flyer down to earth. Ogalla, whose Farruca is one exception to the program's tight pacing, tends to rely on slick, cock-of-the-walk showiness even in excess of flamenco norms. Dancing beside Barrio, he vacillates between light flicks of attention to her and a clearly more comfortable focus on how good his technique is looking. In Farruca, freed of Barrio's presence, he indulges this tendency--which is not to say that it doesn't work for a less critical audience, because the man can genuinely dance like a demon and shimmy like your sister Kate.

I much prefer the dark odd-duckery of Antonio Jiménez. His dancing feels like it comes from a place of deep thought, jarring conflict, haunting memories. His Solea por Bulerias seems to say, "My world is spinning out of control." His pacing and overall execution are quirky, eccentrically truthful. They have nothing to do with how he looks in the moment or who's looking at him.

Barrio dances with abandon in Siguiriya, and I have never seen her dance like this--her face tranformed, her whole body wrenched as if suffering the greatest pain, her attention fixed on a world we cannot see, simply gone. At the end of this intense, shocking solo, Barrio faces into a beam of light and appears to gather it to her like a splash of water to cleanse her head. The fever breaks. This solo is followed by the ensemble performance, Esta Noche No Es Mi Día, for which the evening is named. With roses in their hands, all of the performers offer tribute to their colleague Antonio Vizarriaga who died earlier this year.

Though I have not yet mentioned Noche Flamenca's esteemed, veteran guitarists, Eugenio Iglesias and Salva de María, both men coax honey and shimmering gold from their strings. The company's designers--S. Benjamin Farrar and Christopher Thielking--use atmospheric and tenebristic lighting with painterly magic. My companion was reminded of John Singer Sargent's El Jaleo.

If you have seen Noche Flamenca's past shows, go now: This might be Santangelo's best presentation ever, and Barrio gives her crowning performance. If you have never seen this troupe, what's keeping you? Go now, and hold onto your heart.

Ticketing 

Tuesdays: 7 pm
Wednesdays – Fridays: 8 pm
Saturdays: 2 pm, 8 pm
Sundays: 3 pm

Cherry Lane Theatre

38 Commerce Street, Manhattan

(west of 7th Avenue, south of Bleecker Street; map)

Bejart's "Nutcracker"

Not nearly enough Nutcracker variations? Really? Well, try this, free, courtesy of Classical TV.

Zimmer: "Black Swan" not about dancing

Bird Watching: A Review

by Elizabeth Zimmer, Dance Films Association Journal, December 23, 2010

Cholodenko's "All Right"

I finally saw The Kids Are All Right. (Yep. This is a Netflix household.) And I know I was supposed to hate it. But--guess what?--I didn't.

I had expected something slick, and this film is not. The main thing that got me was its texture of unrelieved discomfort. Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko, co-writer Stuart Blumberg and the cast do discomfort really, really well. So well and so thoroughly, in fact, that discomfort starts from moment one and never lets up even through to the sober ending. The film is brilliant in that way, an absolute encyclopedia of discomfort and one so irritatingly uncomfortable that it not only documents every variety of unease in its characters but reaches out from that screen and uncovers much of the unease in its viewers, too.

I'm going to confess to being uncomfortable with The Kids Are All Right because some personal buttons were pushed with alarming accuracy. But that only made me respect this film more.

First off, I want to get the class issue, which some disapproving viewers have focused on, out of the way. If I see a movie that deals honestly with the lives of real, working class lesbians--or other under-represented people--hooray for that. But I don't expect to see that very often in this commercial climate, and I'd be missing a lot if I were to limit myself to art that faithfully documents the lives of the under-represented.

The bigger political boogaboo about The Kids Are All Right is its central, catalytic dilemma. Jules (Julianne Moore), a fledgling landscape designer in a supposedly settled, affluent household (breadwinning obstetrician wife, two teens) and Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a restauranteur and the lesbian couple's anonymous sperm donor, recently contacted by the curious kids, end up having a wild, secret affair. There has been flack, too, about the depiction and treatment of a Latino laborer Jules hires to help with her first design job, but these passages smartly reveal Jules's roiling insecurity and impulsiveness. Again, it's about profound discomfort enacted by the players and observed and felt by the audience. Moore's attitudes and actions should be seen as a sharp statement about the external consequences of internal rootlessness and upheaval.

Annette Bening--as Nic, Jules's partner--absolutely owns her role, physically, emotionally, psychologically. Her critical, controlling, hyperviligant tendencies--again, insecurity, discomfort, overcompensation--make her a tough character to warm up to. But, like her or not, you do come to sympathize with her. You feel her heart. She's real. There's a major turning point I won't reveal here--just in case any of you haven't gotten your Netflix DVD yet--but Bening's meticulous expressiveness suddenly goes from simply great to simply stunning. Her through-the-fire performance is a through-line delivering you to the film's resolution. It's a hero's journey.

In the beginning, it's tempting to type Ruffalo's free-spirited Paul as a Dionysian stud who only follows his senses. Yet his heart, too, is every bit as much on display in Ruffalo's acting and his responsive, self-revealing interactions with each of the other characters. Is it possible to be human and not wish this man well, even if you end up wishing him away from this particular family?

The "kids," especially Mia Wasikowska as college-bound Joni, turn in credible jobs in their roles--natural in tone and winning. The kids are all right, indeed.

I had a harder time appreciating Moore's work in this film. She appears, in every moment, to be physically straining at her job of Looking Like A Lesbian. This bizarre awkwardness could work for the character. After all, Jules's sexual orientation--like the exact legal status of the couple's "marriage," as they choose to call it--is a lingering question mark. Jules is a woman in flux in any number of ways. But Moore's embodiment of Jules is severely alienating, and I suspect that this undermines the potential empathy of most lesbian viewers. It doesn't help that Jules betrays Nic. For many lesbians, Jules's fling with Paul becomes, simply, a betrayal of lesbian politics--something that straight, mainstream audiences should not witness. Worse, it becomes a betrayal of women who remember losing lovers to men.

Weirdly though, Moore's weirdness as Jules forms a significant part of the film's texture of discomfort, that discomfort you can never escape.

There's an early scene where Jules attempts to go down on Nic (under cover of a comforter, ironically) while Nic watches a gay male porn flick. (Uh-uh! Lesbians enjoying the sight of men having sex? WTF???) When their 15-year-old son Laser (Josh Hutcherson) discovers the tape, Jules takes it upon herself--Nic being too embarrassed--to explain the inconvenient truth that sexuality and desire are not fixed states but are fluid and often complicated. Of course, Jules being Jules, her earnest defense of the couple's taste in entertainment is ham-handed and ineffective.

You sense in Jules, as in Moore, someone who's trying a little too hard, probably because Nic--in her own way, another striver--always seems to demand so much. You know Jules expects to fail. Her affair with Paul looks like a desperate jailbreak out of a life of always trying to do the right thing and duck criticism. But that's all it ever looks like. For Paul, on the other hand, it comes to be a liberation of a different, lovelier kind.

Film artists have given us countless critiques of the American family. This film builds on that tradition, expanding the notion of what an American family can be but without romanticizing or politicizing it. Its characters--not perfect people, not impeccable role models in any sense--reflect believable, recognizable psychic and emotional issues and work through crisis in ways that provide classic drama. Cholodenko and Blumberg remarkably sustain their vision through to the end. And if Annette Bening snares an Oscar, I'll be smiling.

My kind of Christmas cheer

Grace Jones sings "Little Drummer Boy" to Pee Wee Herman

by Xeni Jardin, boingboing, December 21, 2010

Voting round soon for Top Dance Blogs 2010

Top Dance Blogs 2010 - Voting Round!

Well, the initial commenting period has passed. So, get ready, folks! Dance Advantage's Top Dance Blogs 2010 contest will soon move into its voting round on December 27.

InfiniteBody is currently in 3rd Place in the Dance News/Criticism category and sits at #13 on the overall list of top blogs. I'll definitely need you to show up for IB beginning at 10am EST on December 27!

Formal voting will begin on the Dance Advantage site at 10am EST on December  27 and end at 10am on December 30.

In the meantime, you'll find the current standings here.

Thank you so much for caring about InfiniteBody. Your generous comments were beautiful and inspire me to keep on keepin' on. Best of luck to all contest participants!

Eva :-)

Marcia Lewis, stage actress and singer, 72

Marcia Lewis, 72, Stage Actress and Singer

by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, December 22, 2010

Belarus chaos threatens artists

Leaders of Belarus Free Theater Are Forced Underground
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, December 21, 2010

Cherry Lane Theatre will be sold

Cherry Lane Theatre Artistic Director to Leave and Sell Building
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, December 21, 2010

"Nut/Cracked" at DTW

The Bang Group in Nut/cracked
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu) 

One balalaika plinging! 

Two thumbs a' sucking!

Copious vodka flowing! 

Four tap shoes tapping! 

Sunglasses gleaming! 

Ellington a'jazzing!

Bubble wrap a'popping! 

Xmas tree erecting! 

Uh...where was I?

How fun to hang out with David Parker's jazzy, sassy, goofy and yet quite meticulous Nutcracker variation, Nut/Cracked (2003) in the final performance of The Bang Group's DTW season!

As much fun as a harmless slip on skating rink ice and an irresistible waltz with flowers that make you sneeze.

As much fun as finding you've got Tchaikovsky looping in the brain but with considerable help from the likes of Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller.

The kind of fun where nothing's sacred but everything's beloved--ballet and vaudeville, Broadway and Hollywood, dancers of every shape and talent. Let's hear it for fun!

Jennifer Sydor and Aaron Mattocks in Nut/Cracked
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu) 

And so, thank you, David and company, for the fun and the sugar plums and the smiles on an almost-winter night.

Canadian artist's protest rebuffed by NPG

Canadian Artist Loses Battle With National Portrait Gallery
by Kate Taylor, The New York Times, December 20, 2010

"Black Swan" on the couch

Black Swan: Psychiatrists Diagnose Natalie Portman's Portrayal of Psychosis

by Susan Donaldson James, ABC News/Health, December 20, 2010

"Spidey" needs fixing

Actor Injured in Fall During 'Spider-Man' Performance
by Dave Itzkoff and Hamilton Boardman, The New York Times, December 20, 2010

Happy Winter Solstice!

Sunrise at First Sight

(Photo by keattikorn)

Top Blogs: InfiniteBody hits 2nd Place!

Hey, y'all! Check this out: InfiniteBody is in 2nd Place in the Dance News/Criticism category of the Top Dance Blogs of 2010 competition!

Neck & Neck: Top Dance Blog Standings

Want to help InfiniteBody get to 1st Place?

Read my announcement post (click right here!) and add your comment to the comments under it! That's all you have to do!

Oh...there's a deadline, though--this Wednesday, December 22!

Many thanks and Happy Winter Solstice!

Eva :-)

Gay USA interviews Hide/Seek co-curator

Gay USA 12.14.10

Gay USA hosts Andy Humm and Ann Northrop interview Hide/Seek co-curator Jonathan D. Katz about the National Portrait Gallery exhibition and rightwing censorship.

Degas: Vision, time and change

Drive to Draw Trumps Handicap

by Deborah Feller, DeborahFeller.com, December 19, 2010

Theater artists jailed in Belarus

A Call to Help Support Detained Members of the Free Theater in Belarus
by Jeremy M. Barker, Culturebot, December 20, 2010

All it's cracked up to be

See a live performance of David Parker and The Bang Group's Nut/Cracked, streaming live!

Watch tonight, December 20, 7:30-9pm ET. Click here.

Now in its fourth appearance at Dance Theater Workshop, Nut/Cracked incorporates an enterprising mix of tap, ballet, contemporary, disco and even toe tap. Tinged with whimsy, Nut/Cracked is a comic, subversive neo-vaudeville danced to novelty and popular arrangements of the score as well as the traditional orchestral suite. This year, each of the performances will feature students from all of five New York City boroughs.

Changes for Movement Research

Movement Research will start moving out of its current office space (at Dance Theater Workshop) on Tuesday, December 21 and open its new office at Avenue C Studio (55 Avenue C between 4th and 5th Streets) on Monday, January 3.

If you can help with the move in any way, please contact Rebecca Wender at rebeccawender@movementresearch.org.

And here's more MR news:

Update your bookmarks and links: The new Critical Correspondence Web site can be found at

http://www.movementresearch.org/criticalcorrespondence/.

Barton's seekers

For some choreographers, performance space is a laboratory. Or a playpen. Or a classroom. Or a soapbox.

Not so for Canada's Aszure Barton. For her, space is theater. And I mean real, old-school theater. The kind where a performer comes out and practically opens up a vein to reach you. Because that's who he or she is. And where it's okay to lower a disco ball and send flecks of starlight spinning through the darkness of the world.

I first saw Barton's Busk in Sarasota, Florida, where it had its world premiere at the Ringling International Arts Festival (2009). Here's some of what I wrote about it for Dance Magazine:

...costumes merely offer hints of narrative possibilities. Huddling dancers in dark hoodies, in one section, could signal everything from homeless street kids to a death-spooky group of monks, but no matter. We’re not meant to hold onto any identification long enough to pin it down.

Dancers’ bodies move like bold splashes of paint, match the slippery suppleness of clay, shimmer and resonate like stringed instruments, sing in overtones, and emote in a multitude of tongues. Today, many dance artists collaborate widely and consider their productions to be multidisciplinary. Barton—with an assist from her dancers, among the most magnetic and psychologically expressive performers onstage today—delivers the multidisciplinary, and multivalent, body.

A dancer’s long frame undulating, while one hand—adjoined to and splaying out from a hip—wriggles like a sea anemone, is at once human, not quite human, and a collective of humans, or perhaps a collage of human experience. Barton, who famously builds on each of her dancers' individual strengths, also seems quite confident and happy deploying a large group across sizable space. It’s amusing to realize that she can sneakily multiply a group even further by turning each one into many. 

Barton, I now see, can also turn this hour-long, episodic dance into many--revisiting, reworking and recasting it, remolding it to its specific venue and even rethinking its focus. The renewed Busk--running now through Sunday evening at Baryshnikov Arts Center's Jerome Robbins Theater--feels more powerful than the version that intrigued me in Sarasota. Its dancers--some original and some different--are still an astonishingly forceful, magnetic ensemble, agile and hellbent, sly and masterful, as capable of sophisticated musicality and breathtaking beauty as of cartoonish distortion. (I thought, at times, of the mercurial, sublime James Thiérrée, especially when watching Stephan Laks's solo dancing. Eric Beauchesne and Jonathan Emanuell Alsberry are also great standouts in this overall handsome troupe that includes Jenna Fakhoury, Charlaine Katsuyoshi, Andrew Murdock, Emily Oldak, Cynthia Salgado and Evan Teitelbaum.) Barton's vision seems big and bouyant in a way that forces us to ask ourselves, as people, as artists, "Why do you accept limits?"

With a large and grand creative team, most notably including Lev Zhurbin's Ljova + The Kontraband (primary music); Michelle Jank (costumes); Nicole Pearce (lighting); Keith Caggiano (sound design)

See Aszure Barton & Artists in Busk--today at 3pm and 8pm; Sunday at 7pm. For information and ticketing, click here.

Baryshnikov Arts Center

450 West 37th Street, Manhattan

(between 9th and 10th Avenues; map)

View InfiniteBody blog better on your smartphone

Blogger has introduced new mobile templates for our blogs. So, if you happen to do a lot of your reading on a smartphone, you'll be able to enjoy reading InfiniteBody now optimized for small screens. 

And if you also publish a Blogger blog, you can find out more about this new option in this post on Blogger in Draft.

Health taskforce responds to Times critic

Dance/USA Taskforce on Dancer Health Responds to New York Times Critic

by Adrienne Westwood, Dance/NYC, December 17, 2010

Blogs contest: Thank you, everyone!

...for the fantastic comments I've been getting on my entry post for the Best Dance Blogs of 2010 contest! You're all great!

(c)2010, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

 
This is just a quick reminder to all InfiniteBody readers that you can support this blog by adding your own comment to the growing list on that post. Just click here, scroll down inside that post until you see either a "Comments" or "Post A Comment" link. Click it and write whatever you'd like.

Note: Don't add your comments to this post or to the original contest announcement on Dance Advantage's site. You must post them to my blog announcement, which ran on December 14.

Comments are moderated. So, there might be a short delay before yours gets published on the InfiniteBody site. But rest assured, I'll be delighted to get it, and it will contribute towards InfiniteBody's chances of making it to the roster of Best Dance Blogs of 2010!

Deadline for your comments: Wednesday, December 22

Remember, if you have a dance blog (or a blog that covers dance-related matters at least 60% of the time), you can enter the contest, too. Check out Dance Advantage's original post for full instructions.

Best of luck to us all!

Eva :-)

Blake Edwards, 88

Blake Edwards, a Master of Film Comedy and Farce, Dies at 88

by Aljean Harmetz, The New York Times, December 16, 2010

Chicago's Dept. of Cultural Affairs dismantled

Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs is dismantled as 29 are laid off
by Jim DeRogatis, WBEZ91.5

O’Con loves a mystery

Underneath Where We Are--the latest enigma from the interesting mind of choreographer Tara O’Con--features a couple of marvelously self-controlled performances by Jodi Bender and Megan Madorin at The Chocolate Factory. These two have a very difficult and sophisticated task: to draw an audience into the fine, delicate details of movement and of tactile experience, to keep watchers sharply focused even when the information coming from the dancers’ bodies aims to bypass the logic centers of the brain. It’s a gamble for O’Con and her collaborating dancers, and they win.

At the outset, a low rumble slithers beneath the dark, like a train passing deep below the building’s foundation. Opposite the audience, against a distant wall, an indistinct shape writhes in heavy shadow. The faintest light dusts the top of it, and eventually we can tell it is two bodies splayed against the wall, two women entwined, stretching with and collapsing upon each other. Since this opening goes on a while, a thought comes: What if this were to be the entire dance--Bender and Madorin endlessly twisting, twining and sinking, wallflowers drooping from weak stalks--could that gamble work? Interesting to contemplate. I almost think it could. In more light, however, they collapse to the floor and rest.

This pause afforded a moment to reflect on the abstract work of art that is The Chocolate Factory’s interior. Most of O’Con’s dance is performed quietly, slowly, and with reference to the space and its unusual features--the dark, ominous-looking shaftway, helpfully labeled SHAFTWAY and barricaded with two horizontal metal bars; the patchy-surfaced sliding door; the thick, vertical pipe at one side. Dancers never--to my best recollection--look into our eyes; most often, they dance with their backs or sides facing us, and they emphasize only the life of the animal body, not the life of any identifiable ego. They attend to their own bodies or to the surfaces of the space, and that attention seems to have nothing to do with us--at least, on an intellectual level. But O’Con makes us feel the breathing of bodies--quite literally, at times, as when Bender pants heavily after her solo to the old Motown tune, “Who’s Loving You,” a singular eruption from the identifiable world of pop culture. We also perceive, strongly, the breathing presence and soul of place.

With lighting by Chloë Z. Brown and sound design and compositioin by Jason Sebastian

Underneath Where We Are continues, nightly at 8pm, through Saturday evening. Click here for information and ticket reservations.

The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue
Long Island City, Queens
718-482-7069
(directions)

Boise's Trey McIntyre Project featured on PBS

Trey McIntyre Project Finds Dance Partner in Boise

PBS Newshour, December 15, 2010

NPG curators discuss censorship

Curators Criticize Controversial Art’s Removal
by Kate Taylor, The New York Times, December 15, 2010

Wojnarowicz: the more things change...

Artist David Wojnarowicz discusses right-wing backlash against the NEA and arts funding (circa 1990).

Dance/NYC examines impact of reorganized NYSCA

A Message from NYSCA Chairman Danny Simmons, December 3, 2010

From the New York City Arts Coalition: NYSCA Issues and Upcoming Hearing

Dance NYC Testimony to New York State Assembly, December 13, 2010

Gossip columns for the arts?

Arts Criticism: Still Relevant or Passé?

by Camille LeFevre, Mélange, December 14, 2010

Swans hurt in the making of this movie?

Swanday Bloody Swanday
by Debra Cash, The Arts Fuse, December 12, 2010

Flamenco singer Enrique Morente, 67

Enrique Morente, Celebrated Flamenco Singer, Dies at 67
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, December 15, 2010

The movie of the moment is a mess

'Black Swan' deals ballet a black eye
by Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post, December 9, 2010

Time to give Berlusconi the boot!

In Italy, A Political Opera about Opera

by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, December 10, 2010

Pompeii’s Problems Reflect Longstanding Neglect

by Elisabetta Povoledo, The New York Times, December 13, 2010

Berlusconi Narrowly Survives Vote of Confidence

by Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, December 14, 2010

Tap it out with Michela!

One of my favorite young tappers--Michela Marino-Lerman--will teach a new class in Intermediate Tap Technique at American Tap Dance Foundation, starting Monday, January 3!

Class will consist of working on mastering technique and musicality. We will learn historical dances as well as my original choreography, and learn how to apply what we have learned to create your own choreography. In addition we will spend the last few minutes of class jamming and working on improvisation skills.

Mondays, 5pm-6:15pm

American Tap Dance Center
154 Christopher St. #2B, Manhattan

$15 per class
$52 - 4 class card
$104 - 8 class card

To register, contact Courtney at runft@atdf.org, or call 646-230-9564.

Do you publish a dance blog? Love InfiniteBody? (Contest)

The Top Dance Blogs of 2010 Contest | Dance Advantage

Hey, InfiniteBody readers!

Do you publish a dance blog (or one that covers dance at least 60% of the time)? If so, check out this contest for the Top Dance Blogs of 2010, created by Nichelle Strzepek, Houston-based writer/editor of Dance Advantage.

Blog categories:

Dance News/Criticism

Artistic Process/Investigation

Dance Company/School

Dance Education/Training

Dancer Musings

Dance Student/Beginner

Deadline: Wednesday, December 22

You'll find complete information on Dance Advantage.

And while you're at it--and this is VERY, VERY, VERY IMPORTANT--please, please, please show your support for InfiniteBody by posting comments below about this contest post! (Scroll all the way down to the "Post A Comment" link. Click it. Write something!) That's how it works! Only blogs with the most comments about this contest post will qualify for the voting round.

I'd love it if you'd write about InfiniteBody and what it means to you or what you'd like to see from it in the future. I know you appreciate InfiniteBody, and I'm counting on you!

Thanks for your support! Happy holidays!
Eva Yaa Asantewaa

More fallout from Smithsonian censorship

Warhol Foundation Threatens to End Support for Smithsonian

by Kate Taylor, The New York Times, December 13, 2010

City Ballet's Jenifer Ringer speaks out

City Ballet Dancer Responds to Times Critic
by The New York Times, December 13, 2010

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Go ahead. Act Out.

Act Out Class Helps Gay Actors Find Themselves Onstage

by Erik Piepenburg, The New York Times, December 12, 2010

Flown off to Vegas

‘Come Fly Away’ to Vegas
by Rachel Lee Harris, The New York Times, December 12, 2010

Go into the light!

TAGR.TV Interviews Ernesto Klar

July 30, 2010


ERNESTO KLAR: RELATIONAL LIGHTS

December 15-21

3LD Art and Technology Center

80 Greenwich Street (near Rector Street), Manhattan

Luzes relacionais (Relational Lights) is an interactive audio-visual installation that explores our relationship with the expressional-organic character of space. The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements. The work functions as a living organism with or without the presence and interactions of spectators. When viewers step outside the projected light-space, the system begins its own dialogue with space by means of extruding and morphing sequences of geometric light forms. And when viewers penetrate and interact with the projected light-space, a collective and participatory expression of space unfolds. Luzes relacionais amplifies the three-dimensional fabric of space by making it visible, audible, and tangible to participants. The resulting aesthetic experience encourages an unending relational process of shaping space among participants. Luzes relacionais is a hommáge to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark.

Gallery Hours: 12PM to 8pm and by appointment

Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 15 (6-8pm)

Directions to 3LD

Nearest subway stations are 1/R/W to Rector Street; 4/5 to Wall Street; J/M/Z to Broad Street; A/C to Broadway-Nassau; E to World Trade Center

Music stars with big new job titles

Renée Fleming to Be Consultant at Lyric Opera of Chicago
by Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times, December 9, 2010

Hollywood: addiction to affliction?

What’s behind Hollywood’s affliction addiction?
by Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail, December 10, 2010

Fresh and totally direct

Some quick impressions of four highlights from this season's Fresh Tracks showing at Dance Theater Workshop:

Goodbye Mr. B (Lindsay Clark in collaboration with the performers and Reid Bartelme; performed by Clark, Yve Laris Cohen and Stuart Singer): By far, the standout piece of an interesting evening. There's a sense of artistic assurance here--a calm mastery of space, light, sound and the energies of the body. Simple, clear, formal design is the best container for driven passion when "a tornado meets a volcano," as Eminem would say. You want to see this one so you can say you saw it when Clark goes on to rule, and rule she will.

EGO (by and for Marjani A. Forté): A reverberating, hallucinatory score (by Everett V. Saunders) forms the perfect sonic matrix for this vigorous, kaleidoscopic solo on an edge where assertion of self (or, really, the eruption of multiple selves) meets aggression. You'll note that Forté has learned well from Blondell Cummings, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Camille A. Brown, distinctive artists with whom she has worked. But what's especially convincing here is that she never loses control of the physical shapes or the impression she's making. Never. Never ever.

Duke (Yve Laris Cohen, in collaboration with Michael Mahalchick; performed by Cohen, Mahalchick, Joey Cannizzaro and Niall Noel): This is the second piece I've seen by Cohen; the first, presented at Dixon Place, also featured this transgender-identified, multidisciplinary artist with a bared chest, matter-of-factly revealing surgical scars beneath what was once female breasts. That work, as it unfolded, was forged in ritualized pain and endurance. This current piece adds a Sisyphean task for Mahalchick--a fleshy bear of a man who repeatedly clasps the small, boyish Cohen around the torso and ports him, and the heavy plank of wood he's carrying, from one place to another until the exertion of this labor becomes clearly audible and palpable. There's more to this piece, but this very long, repetitive section is, in a strange way, dazzling...and grueling...to witness. And frankly I long to chain a certain New York Times critic to a seat and, A Clockwork Orange-style, force him to watch it over and over and over again.

Jessica's Story (by and for Rebecca Patek): I don't know how I did it, but I seem to have spaced out and missed a lot of the original media frenzy around the Jessica McClure story--18-month-old Texas girl falls down a well and is later rescued, to great fanfare, in Reagan's America. I guess I just ignored it. But Patek wore me down anyway with her her pathologically unassuming manner strangely wedded to a wacko presumption to speak for "America's baby"--now 24 and a mother--who, according to Patek, refuses to have anything to say about this bizarro episode in her insanely famous toddler-hood. (Why, the nerve of her! Forcing Patek to create this dance!) A kind of brilliant video backdrop gives literal and archetypal context while temporarily overwhelming Patek's live action. Nevertheless, this satire stands as one of the daffiest, wickedest creations I've ever seen at DTW, and there's something downright admirable about that. It really should be the last piece presented under the historic DTW name. Really. Truly.

Catch the last night of Fresh Tracks tonight at 7:30. (Information and ticketing)

Dance Theater Workshop

219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan