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Monday, January 31, 2011

Rocco Landesman is too much

Landesman Comments on Theater
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, January 28, 2011

Too much theater?
by Erik Piepenburg, The New York Times, January 31, 2011

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Shim Sham like a butterfly

Shim Sham -- Tonight! 7pm! Free!

Hosted by Roxane Butterfly
Featuring the Theo Hill Trio

Curated by Rashida Bumbray
This jam is open to tap dancers of all levels and concludes with the famous Shim Sham Shimmy, the hoofers’ international anthem. So come enjoy the show or bring your shoes and join the jam!
Roxane "Butterfly"
Based in New York and Barcelona, French-born tap dancer Roxane “Butterfly” was given
her name by the late legendary be-bop hoofer Jimmy Slyde. Known for her Worldbeats projects that merge a range of musical influences including flamenco, Central African, Indian, classical, and experimental jazz with tap dance, Butterfly hosts this free open jam session in which some of the finest of New York City’s rhythm tap community come together to share and showcase their moves.
Having started her 25 year career in France, Butterfly has shared the stage with generations of tap greats including Slyde, Gregory Hines, The Nicholas Brothers, Tamango, and Savion Glover. She is known for her collaborations with musicians working in a range of diverse musical forms.
The Kitchen -- 512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan (directions)

Friday, January 28, 2011

Live & Outspoken with 651 Arts

As part of 651 Arts's Live & Outspoken series, Ntozake Shange will interview Marc Bamuthi Joseph:

Tuesday, March 8 (7PM)

The James and Martha Duffy Performance Space
Mark Morris Dance Center
3 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn (directions)
Artist and performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of America’s most vital voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. After appearing on Broadway as a young actor, Joseph developed several poetically based works for the stage that toured across the US, Europe, and Africa. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary Russell Simmons Presents Brave New Voices; an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists;” and mentor to young writers with Oakland’s YOUTH SPEAKS. Joseph speaks with Shange, who he has called “one of my greatest influences," about the artistic process, activism and more. Bamuthi will perform excerpts from his works Word Becomes Flesh and red, black and GREEN: a blues
Click here for tickets or call 212-868-4444.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Invitation from NY Live Arts, Febuary 19

New York Live Arts Community Welcome Session
Saturday, February 19, 3pm
Dance Theater Workshop

Bessie Schonberg Theater
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
RSVP required: nyla.eventbrite.com
Meet the staff of New York Live Arts and get answers to your questions about the new organization!
You are invited to a Welcome Panel and public discussion addressing the recent merger between Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theater Workshop to create New York Live Arts.
 Panel

Jean Davidson, Executive Director, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company 
and New York Live Arts

Andrea Scholler, Executive Director, Dance Theater Workshop

Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director, New York Lives Arts

Carla Peterson, Artistic Director, New York Live Arts

Moderator TBA

Followed by open Q & A
Reception to follow in the Dance Theater Workshop Lobby

RSVP required: nyla.eventbrite.com

Commit to being present

Earthworms Deserve More Poems!
by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Global Swarming Honeybees, January 25, 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

Blogging a Black ballerina's journey

The Black Swan Diaries: The start of a journey

Ballerina Aesha Ash introduces her new blog on the struggles and triumphs of being African American in the ballet world and beyond.

High Museum of Art: Salvador Dalí

Art Review: Salvador Dalí – The Late Work
by Deborah Feller, DeborahFeller.com, January 24, 2011

Black sutra

Chelsea's Rubin Museum of Art, a beautiful home for the classic arts of the Himalayan region, regularly looks far beyond the Himalayas for ideas, imagery and energies that resonate with its spiritual focus. Last Saturday, the Rubin hosted If We Breathe, a living installation by Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Theaster Gates that featured members of The Black Monks of Mississippi, five Black men and women whose performance practice involved the unexpected blending of gospel, blues and Buddhist chant; yoga asanas and the strumming of cello.

At their 2pm public performance, Charisma Sweat's mellow gospel vocals led us up the museum's spiraling staircase to a tiny gallery. There Khari Lemuel plucked spare notes from his cello, while Aya-Nicole Cook performed a smooth yoga sequence before sitting in meditation. In a short while, the monks quietly retreated, and the audience dispersed.

That performance--part of an afternoon in which the group appeared on each hour, from noon to 3pm, and in "a special salon concert for high-level members"--could not have lasted much more than five minutes. For something so short and so understated, though, it left a residue of serenity with an undercurrent of soul that said firmly, without shouting, "We are present." To me, it suggested a place for difference, and our awareness of difference, within the context of sameness, the context of expectations--Buddhism is Asian; Buddhism in today's America is white and affluent; yoga in today's America is white and affluent; Black Americans are Christian, period. In its quiet way, this installation blew down all kinds of boundaries.

I didn't expect, though, that it might have something to suggest to me about dance writing. But I found a thought arising, unbidden, about dance criticism and about how prominent critics of dance and other disciplines have recently taken defensive postures about the value and even the very survival of their profession. It was this question: "What if we were to think of our dance criticism not as 'my job' but as 'my practice?'"

How might that shift things? How might commitment to practice open up, for each of us, the possibility of humility, curiosity, attention, creativity? What if we realized we had nothing to protect and much to learn and exchange?

Really, I don't know why that thought about practice arose at that particular moment, but I thank Gates, Sweat, Cook, Lemuel, Yaw Agyeman and Dayna Lynn for planting the seed.


Theaster Gates: The Black Monks of Mississippi performing at 2010the Whitney Biennial


More videos:

The Black Monks of Mississippi on blip.tv

Theaster Gates lectures at Milwaukee Art Museum

For information on current and future programs of the Rubin Museum of Art, click here.

"Global Water Dances" action announced

Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere 
Time-Zone Spanning Performances to Motivate Action
On June 25, 2011, Global Water Dances will celebrate the importance of water in human life with a 24-hour series of performances moving across the time zones of the world. 
“On July 25, 2011, we will be using dance and music to blend our local water issues with the global struggle to insure safe water for every human being” said Marylee Hardenbergh, artistic director for Global Water Dances. “Dancers and choreographers in more than 33 countries are already at work, and new countries are joining us every week.” 
Global Water Dances will start with performances in countries in the South Pacific, rolling westward through the time zones. Each group will produce a 3-part performance. The first two parts will be site-specific, locally produced and locally choreographed, using local musicians and dancers. But in the final part, all groups will use a common theme, using the same piece of music.
Global Water Dances will give people a new and unique way to express our deepening concern about the growing world-wide water crisis,” said Hardenbergh. “More than 1 billion people right now do not have access to safe water. By moving together on this special day, we will mobilize people to develop and demand solutions to water problems at every level.” 
*****
Global Water Dances artistic director Marylee Hardenbergh has choreographed site-specific dances in settings as varied as the bombed-out Parliament Building in Sarajevo to 2006’s One River Mississippi, a one-day celebration of the Mississippi with events from the river’s headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. 
For more information, visit Global Water Dances here.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Will.i.am!

Questions for Will.i.am
by Deborah Solomon, The New York Times, January 20, 2011

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability

Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability
The Scholar & Feminist Conference XXXVI
Barnard College

Saturday, 2/26 (9-5pm)
This year's Scholar & Feminist conference brings together feminism and disability studies, two fields that have contributed to the interrogation of the public/private divide, and when brought together, radically contest and amplify the ways in which this split has produced extremely thin understandings and practices of accessibility, participation, livelihood, visibility and integration. Movements: Politics, Performance, and Disability will look closely at the ways in which political action and cultural production contribute to new ways of imagining what an inclusive society might look like for all. Through dance, film, political engagement and dialogue, we will make our way from Barnard College to New York City to the larger world and back again, exploring the ways in which artistic endeavors, scholarship, and politics have all led to mobilizations for feminist and disability activism. The conference features a series of workshops on topics including parenting and disability, alternatives to creating community in the face of privitization and state budget cuts, films on disability, and a new project on oral histories with Barnard and Columbia alumnae who identify as disabled. The day concludes with a special performance by the Heidi Latsky Dance Company, a fully integrated dance group.
Panelists include Nirmala Erevelles, Carrie Sandahl, Susan Schweik, Alice Sheppard, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Pam Cobrin, Faye Ginsburg, Ansel Lurio, Kate Schaub, Penny Wolfson, Mary Marshall Clark, Ynestra King, Julie Maury, Stacey Milbern, and Akemi Nishida. ReelAbilities Film Festival will present a series of groundbreaking short films made by and about different deaf communities from around the world.
A conference website and online registration will be available online in late January. Please join our email list or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Berry's movers and shakers

The Irondale Center’s feels like a mini-BAM Harvey Theater, what with its air of history, charming intimacy and dark, peeling walls. I visited for the first time last night, to attend a FLICfest performance. A good place, I think, to see a good, old-school piece of humanism like Confined, a work from the repertory of dancer-choreographer Emily Berry. The hour-long work was performed by Berry and her collaborative B3W company--Nicole McClam, Milvia Pacheco, Sara Roer and Akiko Tomikawa, with actress Sarita Covington and violinist Regina Sadowski. Music was composed by Daniel Bernard Roumain.

Confined’s text, scripted by Todd Craig, is a torrent of words tumbling from Covington throughout the dance. As far as I could follow, it treats of a multiplicity of identities and the experience of feeling constricted within roles imposed by self or others but it also has something to do with family heritage. I say, “as far as I could follow,” because the words are jammed so tightly against one another and fly so quickly from Covington--who must have one hell of a memory--that I could barely keep up. Because she sometimes moved around the dancers, she occasionally placed herself just far enough away that her delicate voice was not clear enough for me to understand. In fact, I experienced the overwhelming and, yes, confining presence of Craig’s text as a competition with imagery--Berry’s dancers and Gail Scott White’s fresh and engaging video. There were times when I had to block out one thing in order to try to grasp and honor the integrity of the other.

Berry works well with props--little wooden tables that turn into cleverly used projection screens; paperback books gently applied to a fallen dancer’s body like bandages; clothing knotted together into long strings that confine and burden. She can create quite touching moments with these imaginative uses of simple things. She has a wonderful eye for visual elements, a capable, well-grounded corps of dancers and a excellent collaborator in her videographer. The missing piece might be an awareness of what could be usefully pared away, a sense of when less could have a chance to mean more.

FLICfest--a Fort Greene, Brooklyn festival devoted to feature-length independent choreography--will run through January 29 with a diverse lineup and an after-hours cabaret. Some of the upcoming performers include Artichoke Dance Company, CatScratch Theatre (the company of FLICfest founder Jeramy Zimmerman) and Layard Thompson. Find out more and get tickets here.

The Irondale Center
Lafayette Avenue Church
85 South Oxford Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
(directions)

Sorry you missed Hilary Easton's show?

Sorry I Missed Your Show!

Saturday, January 29 (4:30-6:30pm)
The upcoming SIMYS features Gibney Dance Center Advisory Group Member Hilary Easton and her recent acclaimed production, Light and Shade.  Moderated by Brian Rogers, Artistic Director of The Chocolate Factory, the event will include excerpts and discussion around Light and Shade, as well as a look back at previous works that set the context for Hilary's current work. 
Free admission. To RSVP, click here.


Gibney Dance Center
890 Broadway (between 19th and 20th Streets), Manhattan
(map)

Wendy Perron gets "The Big Picture"

Here's a wonderful reflection on the occasion of Trisha Brown's 40th Anniversary performances at MOMA by Dance Magazine's editor-in-chief and blogger, Wendy Perron.

The Big Picture of Trisha Brown
by Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine, January 19, 2011

Meet Angel in America's Porter & Greif

An Evening With Billy Porter and Michael Greif from Angels in America

Monday, February 7 (7pm)

The Center Speakers Series is proud to present Broadway vocalist Billy Porter and Tony Award winning director Michael Greif in conversation with Frank Di Lella. Mr. Porter is currently starring in the sold out Broadway hit Angels in America (Part 1 & 2) directed by Greif at the Signature Theatre Company.

Admission: $15 (For ticketing, click here.)

LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

For more information, contact Yojani Hernandez at yhernandez@gaycenter.org or 212-620-7310

Friday, January 21, 2011

Brantley on the Aldredge razzle dazzle

Surface Thrills: Remembering the Costumes of Theoni V. Aldredge
by Ben Brantley, The New York Times, January 21, 2011

Javier Dzul's "Forest of Kings"

Javier Dzul's self-presentation could not be more eye-catching. The dancer/aerialist/choreographer and head of Dzul Dance makes striking sculpture of his sinewy flesh with every movement on land or in the air. His every appearance in Forest of Kings--an ensemble work premiered last night at Baruch Performing Arts Center--is a regal, masterful study in how to stare down and command a stage or, really, life itself, by sheer force of personality and will. And it is clear that he has inspired his young dancers--at least, the male ones--to go for the gusto, though nobody grabs that gusto quite like Dzul.

I can't say that Forest of Kings, itself, stands up to its creator's qualities. Sourced in Dzul's Mayan heritage and childhood in the jungles of Southern Mexico, the hour-long production twists balletic, modern and aerial techniques into a vaguely-ritualistic, ethnographic fantasia that would not be out of place as a Las Vegas revue. There certainly is enough Vegas cheese in the costuming, the women's mechanistic contortions, their slithering over the men, their frequently splayed, crotch-presenting legs, and the solo--by a dancer resembling the young Cyndi Lauper--that's nearly a pole dance en l'air.

If Dzul made this piece truly out of love for his culture, it would be wonderful to actually see more of that culture and less of the worst values in American entertainment.

Forest of Kings continues tonight and tomorrow, Saturday, at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. For program, schedule and ticketing information, click here or call 646-312-5073.

25th Street (between 3rd and Lexington Avenues), Manhattan

"Pointe and Pirouettes" master classes

Pointe and Pirouettes
Master Ballet Classes with Wendy Whelan and Francois Perron

Monday, February 21

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center 
248 West 60th Street (between Amsterdam and West End Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)
Pointe and Pirouettes is a day of master ballet classes and pointe shoe fittings. Dancers will have the opportunity to have pointe shoe fittings by master fitters as well as master ballet classes with Francois Perron, Manhattan Youth Ballet's Managing Artistic Director and Official Ballet Coach of the Billy Elliotts on Broadway beginning at 10:30am, and New York City Ballet Principal Dancer, Wendy Whelan, beginning at 1:30pm. Master Pointe Shoe Fitters from the companies Freed, Capezio, Grishko, Sansha, Bloch and Gaynor Minden will be in attendance. 
The master ballet classes are from 10:30am to noon and 1:30pm to 3pm.  Pointe shoe fittings will be held from noon to 4:30pm.
The master classes are $25.  To register, click here.

In search of guys with European-looking scarves!

I love this story! I love this video! I hope he finds these guys! Enjoy!

New Yorker searches for owner of remarkable blizzard photos
posted by Liz Goodwin, The Lookout, January 19. 2011

Miller and Bell: new work at DTW

Andrea Miller's Gallim Dance and Sidra Bell Dance New York are bringing something that feels like high glamour to Dance Theater Workshop this week. With their juxtaposed world premieres, these two confident artists and their creative teams take dance theater and punch up the theatricality to an aggressive level. 


Miller's half-hour For Glenn Gould--inspired by a kind of before/after consideration of the pianist's two contrasting approaches to Bach's Goldberg Variations--evokes Gould's eccentricity. Metal folding chairs suggest the specially-designed piano chair that Gould insisted on using; stacks of books and other items prop up dancers' prone bodies just as Gould used blocks to raise his piano to an unusual, preferred height. The stage is littered--colorfully, artistically--with found objects, the detritus of internal disorder spilling outward from a brilliant artist to his environment. Safe to say, dances containing metal folding chairs are going to be irritating--sonically and, perhaps, otherwise. On that score, For Glenn Gould does not disappoint. But Gould seems to exist here as a screen upon which to project and pick through issues around irrationality and creativity in a way that proves more sensational than satisfying. The oddball Gould proves to be a very specific and specifically distracting screen. On the other hand, the Gallim ensemble--Caroline FerminTroy OgilvieFrancesca RomoDan WalczakJonathan Royse Windham and Arika Yamada--drive the choreography and their bodies at a serious pitch that always amazes.


Bell's Pool ups the theatrical ante with disco-like decadence and sensational performance by Jonathan CampbellAustin DiazAlexandra JohnsonCaroline KirkpatrickZach McNallyMaud de la Purification and Kendra Samson. Miller and Bell share the same lighting designer, but, here, Vincent Vigilante has stepped up his own theatrical attack with stark lighting that carves out sharply-delineated zones and ovular pockets of space with radically different temperatures. Oh, baby, you feel the lighting--a truly impressive thing--while you wonder if you shouldn't be feeling the choreography, too, and getting a better grasp on meaning. Pool keeps spooling out more and more wild cleverness, seeming about to end and always finding more play (if not more sense) in that spool--a stretch of 41 minutes that seems to go on forever.


Gallim Dance and Sidra Bell Dance New York continue at Dance Theater Workshop through this Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. For more information, click here.


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

Movement Research presents dance film shorts

Movement Research Studies Project
in partnership with Dance Films Association

Dance On Camera

Tuesday, January 25th, 7pm

Judson Memorial Church Meeting Hall
55 Washington Square South, Manhattan
(directions)

Free admission. No reservations.
A shorts program curated by Movement Research 2010 Artists-in-Residence Anna Azrieli, Laurie Berg, Yve Laris Cohen and Chase Granoff, in collaboration with Dance Films Association Director Deirdre Towers, this event is a part of DFA's 39th Annual Dance on Camera Festival.
The evening's viewing and discussion will radiate out from an initial grouping of three short films selected from submissions to Dance Film Association's 2011 Dance On Camera Festival. Each film centers around movement in relationship to landscapes, ranging from the natural world to the urban environment. The films posit the moving body as an active agent that designs its surroundings, while still being subject to the sublime. The second part of the evening features films and videos selected by the curators, responding to issues brought up by themes in the original films, as well as this event's curatorial process. Samuael Topiary will moderate a discussion that engages all of the films and discourses surrounding this event.
30 CECIL STREET [Dan Canham/Will Hanke, UK, 2010, 7:20m]
Shot in the dilapidated premises of the Theatre Royal in the Limerick Athenaeum building, Ireland. With a history that stretches back over 150 years, the Royal Theatre has been closed to the public for the last 13 years. Engaging with the atmosphere and past of this near-derelict building and using the soundtrack made up of four sounds and interviews with people associated with the Athenaeum, this short explores the state of a building once the hub of cultural activity.
 DUNE DANCE [Zena Bibler, USA; 2010, 2:08m]
Dune(s) dance on a blustery day in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Choreographed, danced, and filmed on the spot in May 2010.
 OANNES [Ivo Serra, USA; 2007, 6m]
Oannes represents The GOD of knowledge to the Babylonian (Ea) and to the Greeks, cultures, and he was the last mythological figure to be connected with the lost city Atlantis. The artist sought to make this mythological being appear.

On the run with Parsons Dance

Parsons Dance rehearsing Run to you
(photo: Paula Lobo)
What better match for the exuberant, jazz-infused dance of David Parsons than the gutsy, jazz-saturated rock tunes of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker?

And so, as it launches its Joyce Theater season next week, Parsons Dance will rock out to the music of Steely Dan. Run to you opens with a romantic stroll for two that expands into a buoyant romp ("Aja"), a contentious, despairing walk on the wild side ("The Royal Scam"), a dynamic batch of saucy boy-girl duets ("The Fez") and a big, sweeping finish ("Reelin' In The Years"). Watching the company run through the piece, I found "Royal Scam" too controlled and pictorial to be convincing, but the more upbeat sections have an easygoing musicality, polish and charm. The Joyce crowd is bound to come hungry and leave happy. 

Parsons is blessed with a radiant crew that includes Eric Bourne, Sarah Braverman, Elena D'Amario, Abby Silva Gavezzoli, Christina Ilisije, Jason MacDonald, Miguel Quinones, Ian Spring, Melissa Ullom and Steven Vaughn.

The season (January 26-February 6) will feature three programs of Parsons repertory and includes two other world premieres--Portinari, inspired by the Brazilian artist/activist Candido Portinari, and Love, oh Love, a commission by acclaimed choreographer Monica Bill Barnes, set to music by Kenny Rogers, Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross.

For complete programming, scheduling and ticketing details, click here.

175 8th Avenue (between 18th and 19th Streets), Manhattan

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

"(Black) Light" by Deirdre Towers





A contemporary take on a ritual devised by the Gypsies to free themselves of their past and embrace the light. A screen adaptation for Katherine Crockett, principal of Martha Graham Dance Company, based on a flamenco solo choreographed by Deirdre Towers set to the music of Paul Jared Newman with a sculpture by Macedonian artist Bojan Mitrevski and cinematography by Dikayl Rimmasch, director of the American Masters documentary on Cachao.
Premiered in Chicago as part of Dance for the Camera 2010: R.E.M. / Dreamscapes. Other showings include NJ State Film Festival at Cape May, Dance Camera Istanbul, and Big Screen Project, NYC.

DFA's Big Screen Project

Dance Films Association welcomes you to The Big Screen Project, a new venue for video, film, live and interactive content, "a real space where people, media and culture connect." And it's free!
The Big Screen Project is a 30 x 16.5 ft. HD Format LED screen on a wall in a 10,000 sq. ft. public plaza adjacent to a new 54-story multi-use building on Sixth Avenue between 29th and 30th Street in Manhattan. BSP is viewable from 29th and 30th streets (close to 6th Avenue), the atrium behind The Eventi, FoodParc, and Bar Basque, a striking restaurant designed by BLADE RUNNER’s Syd Mead. Headsets are available upon request.
For complete programming and schedule details, click here.

For information on DFA's 39th Annual Dance on Camera Festival (January 3-February 1 at the Walter Reade Theater, the Baryshnikov Arts Center and other venues), click here.

Transeuphoria

Transeuphoria -- an exhibition of gender movers:

Mx Justin Vivian Bond
Sid Branch
Donna Collins
Josie Collins
Chloe Dzubilo
TJ Free
Antony Hegarty
Siobhan Meow
Breyer P‐Orridge

Curated by Chloe Dzubilo and Jeffrey Greene


Umbrella Arts Gallery
317 East 9th Street, Manhattan

(between 1st and 2nd Avenues; directions)

January 20 -- February 13
Reception: Thursday, January 20 (6-8pm)
Outsider Art Fair afterparty: Saturday, February 12 (8-10pm)


“I used to paint at night. Now I paint during the day.” -- Donna Collins


“Ain’t nothing like knowin’ what it feels like…when you slip thru the cracks of society, political niceties, political correctness, health care, housing, employment, wealth, shoe stores, subways, family outings, holidays, systems, systems, Systems. Ain’t nothing like knowing these facts deep in one’s bones. When you’re transsexual. Ain’t nothing like knowing triumph over all of these adversities.” -- Chloe Dzubilo

Contact: Umbrellaarts.com – 212-505-7196

Jacob's Pillow auditions in NYC this weekend

Click below for full audition schedule and location details for Jacob's Pillow Dance auditions New York City this coming Saturday and Sunday.

Audition Schedule - The School · Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

The Black Monks of Mississippi

Rubin Museum of Art:

Saturday, January 22
Echoing his video installation in Grain of Emptiness, sculptor, urban planner, and performance artist Theaster Gates infuses the gallery with live monastic chanting at the top of each hour. Monks layer meditative sutras and gospel singing in this accumulative performance, juxtaposing the Buddhist and African American spiritual experiences. Each performance is distinct, building upon the experience of the previous hour.
Public performances at 12, 1, 2 and 3pm
Free with museum admission

150 West 17th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues), Manhattan
212-620-5000

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Holt Webb's "Vanishing America"

Barbara Ann Levy introduces us to the work of photographer Holt Webb with this striking online exhibit at her BAL Gallery (click here to view):
BAL Gallery's exhibit of photography from Holt Webb's series Vanishing America has been launched to honor Gulf of Mexico residents who suffered enormous losses related to the Horizon oil rig explosion in April 2010, the spill and its aftermath; chronic illness, MRSA-like rashes, upper respiratory illness and unemployment due to the death of oyster beds and pollution of shrimping waters.
The recent report of the National Commission on the BP Oil Disaster scapegoated CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, accusing him of encouraging residents' outrage. But even without Cooper's reports, Gulf Coast residents have plenty to be angry about!
I can assure readers that residents are outraged by the tragic effects of the oil rig explosion. It has been called the most serious environmental disaster in US history. Eleven oil rig workers, female dolphins with calves in seasonal calving grounds, pelicans and countless seabirds died.
In January 2011, barrier reef beaches like Blood Beach and coastal communities in Mississippi seem toxic to residents. They report that once pristine white beaches are now muddied composites of sand and buried layers of oil. They report continued difficulty breathing near shorelines in Mississippi coastal areas. A toxic dispersant was used by BP even in the face of orders not to use it by our Coast Guard.
Please support Holt Webb's artwork from his Vanishing America series. Visit his website. His work is available for sale and also for exhibition. You may e-mail me at barbaraannlevy1@mac.com for more information about how to purchase or exhibit the work.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Tobias on the allure of Trisha Brown

Mining the Past
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, January 14, 2011

Sunday, January 16, 2011

A.O. Scott asks "Who me? Elite?"

Neal Gabler Versus the Critical ‘Elite’
by A. O. Scott, The New York Times, January 13, 2010

Film critic A. O. Scott happens to be one of my favorite cultural writers from The New York Times. But I feel compelled to point out a couple of curious things about this article which appeared in today's Arts & Leisure section.

After working through all his snarkiness about the mainstream public's taste in things, I came to this very interesting graph:
Speaking personally, but also out of a deep and longstanding engagement with the history and procedures of my profession, I have to say that the goal of criticism has never been to control or reflect the public taste--neither is possible--but rather the simpler (but also infinitely difficult) work of analyzing and evaluating works of art as honestly and independently as possible.
Which, to begin with, really sounds like: Public, we're not even talking to you--or about you!

Which raises the question, Who, then, do you see as your readers?  A considerably smaller, elite group, no?

But, fair enough, and I do get Scott's ultimate argument about the overarching power of corporate purveyors of entertainment. But if that graph isn't a sign of someone who has assumed the mantle of intellectual elite, I don't know what would be.

"My profession." "Analyzing and evaluating works of art."

If you're got guts enough to call yourself a critic by profession and privileged enough to be deemed capable and worthy of "analyzing and evaluating works of art" for the goddamn New York Times, I'd say you're part of an elite!

Which brings me to the other fascinating thing about this article that rejects the label elite for cultural critics. The Times has chosen to illustrate it tellingly, with photographs of two other film critics--both of them, like Mr. Scott, white and male.

Just sayin'.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Parsons Dance deal for IB readers!

Parsons Dance is offering InfiniteBody readers a 50% discount on tickets for its upcoming season at The Joyce Theater!

January 26-February 6

Three programs include two premieres by David Parsons and one by Monica Bill Barnes.

Use the code: BLOG (available for all performances except Friday and Saturday evenings)

For full program, schedule and ticketing details, click here.

Yamamoto curates the unseen

Guest curator Nami Yamamoto named her Food for Thought evening at Danspace Project "something/someone that you haven't seen." In my case, the "someone previously unseen" were two young Japanese dancer-choreographers--Michiyo Akamatsu and Yoko Maruyama--who call themselves Akamarukyugyosho. A couple of cartoonish, hard rock'n'rolling kittens from hell, they have energy to burn. I really liked the humor and raw force of their duet, Rise vs Fall, and its clever depiction of support and competition. And, coming right after I spent a couple of hours up at MOMA's On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century show, it made me want to swing by the nearest Staples and buy a bagful of markers. I hope we'll see more of Akamarukyugyosho.

Karen Sherman and Morgan Thorson--who showed part of a work-in-progress--have been seen many times before, though not often enough since making their home in Minnesota. I'm looking forward to the finished piece and whatever they care to bring us when they're next in town.

Another Minnesotan/ex-New York couple--Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs--are also dearly missed, and they were looking good in The Very Unlikeliness (I'm Going to KILL You!). Mostly, I love watching how on top of things they both are despite the off-centered nuttiness of their mission; they're a couple of artists who--like the best comics, verbal or physical--know precisely what they're doing at any given moment. After a while, you notice, with pleasure, their musicality, and it's particularly fascinating to watch them move in unison, side by side, and see how differently they approach the same moves and gestures while remaining in delicious harmony. Fun, fun, fun!

There's one more Food for Thought show this season--tonight at 8pm. Curated by Will Rawls, this one is called appearing and erasing and features work by Sahar Javedani (tranquility in the presence of others), Liliana Dirks-Goodman (Dance #3: Duet for Two Buildings, with Chorus) and Kennis Hawkins with Jocelyn Ladd (Lost in Space).

Food for Thought is Danspace Project's semiannual canned-food drive. Admission is $5 with two cans of food or $10. (details)

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
2nd Avenue at 10th Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Friday, January 14, 2011

Sarah Michelson's "Devotion"

In the right (or the wrong) hands, The Kitchen's black box theater can be a pressure cooker. I don't know whether Sarah Michelson's hands are right or wrong. I think, whenever I see her work, I'm never completely clear about that--and maybe she isn't, either--and, on some level, that's okay. But there were moments last night when I felt like bolting from my seat.

What is devotion (and Devotion)? In Michelson's hands, it is certainly a state of intensity, located just past the intersection of Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs, on the edge of danger. In the bodies of her dancers--best exemplified here by valiant Rebecca Warner--and performers from Richard Maxwell's New York City Players, it is an obsessive, mangled (and mangling) formalism that drives, strains and splays movement beyond the point where it is accceptable (and potentially beautiful) to our eyes, just as the volume and repetition of the work's accompanying music is often pushed past the point where we can absorb it without our scalps throbbing and crawling. Recently, when songwriter Gerry Rafferty died, I thought of Michelson and her similar appropriation of his melancholy hit "Baker Street"--in an endlessly looping cover version--for her piece, Daylight

Her theater feels at once severe and manic, a space where performers push and push and push themselves like Olympic athletes in the cold blast of eccentrically-placed light, where a gargantuan cluster of lights swings with potential lethality over their heads, where we sit, trapped in our winter clothes and too-close seats, feeling whipped up--and whipped to the bone--by the sonic, visual and kinetic energy in the room for an uninterrupted 100 minutes.

Her dancers bear--and, I mean, bear--these roles: Spirit of Religion (Nicole Mannarino), Mary (Non Griffiths), Jesus (James Tyson), Adam (Jim Fletcher), Eve (Eleanor Hullihan) and a quartet of Prophets (Neal MedlynAlice DowningLiz Jenetopulos and Nancy Kim). TM Davy's icon-like portraits of Michelson and a young musician, with their black backgrounds, hang high above the black space; the evening concludes with these painted figures' luminosity being the last thing we see before we're released into the night--a kind of benediction.

With text by Richard Maxwell, original music by Pete Drungle, lighting by Michelson and Zack Tinkelman, and costumes by James Kidd, Shaina Mote and Michelson.

Devotion runs now through Saturday, January 22 at 8pm. No late seating. Schedule and tickets

The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan

"Moving Speech" on Avenue C

Moving Speech
a workshop with Mark Lorimer

Monday-Friday, February 21-25 
12:30-2:30pm

Avenue C Studio
55 Avenue C (between 4th and 5th Streets), Manhattan

$75 for the week, $18 for drop-in

Register
(212) 598-0551 ext. 261
The human body and how we 'speak' with it can be extremely direct and equivocal.  After 20 years as dancers, Mark Lorimer and Cynthia Loemij (both instrumental collaborators with Rosas/Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker) are beginning work on a duet that explores communication and intimacy with a focus on music.  In this week-long workshop, Mark Lorimer will be opening up the process to include the group to develop their own improvisational and written material. What can dance specifically express about experience?  What creates intimacy, successful communication, effective speaking and real listening?  And how do we fail to connect?
Mark Lorimer graduated from LCDS, London, in 1991 and has worked with a.o. Rosas/Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker (on and off since 1994) ZOO/Thomas Hauert, Deborah Hay (The Match), Jonathan Burrows and The Featherstonehaughs.  He has taught at ImpulsTanz, PARTS, the Laban Centre, LCDS, and International Dance Dialogues at Panetta Movement Center.

Ellen Stewart funeral, January 17

A funeral Mass will be celebrated for La MaMa founder-artistic director Ellen Stewart on Monday, January 17 at 10am at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. 

In lieu of flowers, donations to La MaMa ETC can be sent to:

La MaMa ETC
74A East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003

or can be made online.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Memorial service for Jill Johnston (1929-2010)

There will be a celebration of writer/activist Jill Johnston's life and work on Saturday, January 29 (1pm-5pm) at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Manhattan.
Johnston comes on like a flood, vivacious, mile-a-minute, with an uncontrollable eloquence. -- New York Review of Books

La MaMa's Ellen Stewart, 91

Ellen Stewart, Off Off Broadway Pioneer, Dies at 91

by Mel Gussow and Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 13, 2010

Free Belarus! events, Monday

Public Theater Says “Free Belarus!”
FREE BELARUS! Join the Belarus Free Theater’s fight against persecution in their homeland!
COME TO EITHER OR BOTH OF THE FOLLOWING:

The Public Theater and La MaMa present

AN ENCORE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE OF 
Belarus Free Theater’s acclaimed

BEING HAROLD PINTER

Monday, January 17 (7pm)

at The Public Theater 
Hosted by Tom Stoppard and Tony Kushner

Featuring celebrity guests, including MANDY PATINKIN

Tickets on sale now!  $50-$500

(212) 967-7555 or www.publictheater.org

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

PEACEFUL PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION

Sponsored by The Public Theater and Amnesty International USA

Wednesday, January 19 (12pm)

The Mission of the Republic of Belarus to the UN
136 East 67th Street

Join the persecuted Belarus artists and activists!

Speak out against the arrests!

Call for an end to the government’s repressive actions against free speech and expression!

TEXT “PROTEST” to 27138 for more info!
www.amnestyusa.org/eventcent

From Tucson forward

In a time of trauma, a well-delivered presidential speech can reassure, inspire and draw the nation together, and it should surprise no one that President Obama, master speaker, rose to the occasion last evening in Tucson, Arizona.

Being presidential also includes action:
  • to protect the American people (gun control)
  • to fight systemic racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia and transphobia and to foster and protect human rights
  • to seek justice for victims of hate crimes
  • to ensure adequate funding for mental health resources and universal access to quality mental health care
  • to acknowledge that true civility rests upon a foundation of truth and trust and requires the defense of truth, not the promotion (and passive acceptance) of untruths as differing, equally valid points of view
We need a clear commitment from President Obama and our political leadership to fight for these things so that our healing as individuals and as a nation can go deeper and, in the long run, be more secure. We will move forward from Tucson with courage if we take action to address each of our problems at the source.

Criticism? Times readers weigh in

Mailbag: Readers on Criticism
The New York Times, January 13, 2011

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

"Looking for the unexpected moment"

Talking Dance with Eiko & Koma
Walker Channel, Walker Art Center, October 28, 2010

Senior performing arts curator Philip Bither in conversation with Walker artists-in-residence Eiko & Koma

This excellent podcast episode (and others like it in the Walker series) may also be found on iTunes.

Dance Magazine invites feedback

Dance Magazine invites you to Talk Back to Critics: Join the Dialogue. Send in your feedback on Dance Magazine's dance reviews.

It seems a bit clunky--making you send an email rather than use a more convenient Comments system right on the page--but at least it's something.

Click here to read some current and archived Dance Magazine reviews and get started.

Give your junk to Sarah Maxfield

Here's a message to you all from the resourceful Sarah Maxfield. I wish I'd known about this before I recycled a collection of dance, theater and museum tickets--three year's worth!--and the usual annual assortment of press kits and programs! Oh, well... Sounds like a wonderful project. Get involved!

Hello dear friends,
I need your old junk.
I want to include your stuff in an exhibit of performance ephemera. The exhibit will be part of a public event I'm developing for The Chocolate Factory in March. I'd like the exhibit to include as many things as possible (from as many artists as possible), which represent our collective performance past in New York City. Do you have some things you would be willing to share for this purpose?
I'm particularly interested in collecting things like programs, postcards, tickets, fliers, and other things which include information that can be understood and recognized by relative "strangers" to the "performance community," as well as by the denizens of our little world. I'm less interested in costumes, props, etc., unless it is something relatively iconic (i.e. would be recognizable to your audience as well as those who were in your rehearsal room).
If you have some stuff to share, please let me know, and we can coordinate pick-up. Everything will be returned to you, unharmed.
I'm also collecting the following information for the project, so, even if you don't have any physical stuff to share, please consider emailing me your response to the following questions:
1. What is your favorite place in the City to meet someone for coffee?
2. What is your favorite place in the City to meet someone for a drink?
3. What is your favorite public place (street corner, park, crosswalk, etc.) in the City?
Thanks for considering these requests, and feel free to forward this on to your friends.
Cheers,
Sarah Maxfield (sarahmaxATgmailDOTcom)
sarahmaxfield.wordpress.com

Dance films at NewFilmmakers

NewFilmmakers presents three dance documentaries.

Wednesday, January 6 (6pm-7pm)
Joshan Esfandiari Martin's Next (2010, 6 minutes) is a short film about a young dancer. Utilizing its own edit technique (roll edit), the images are in constant lateral flow, connecting her dance with a unique personal life.
In Christine Kellogg's Dancing the Tide (2010, 11 minutes), when the isolation and sorrow of life take over, it's the love, laughter, and support from others that brings us back into the dance. 
Noriko Sakamoto's The Heron and The Geisha: A Life in Dance (2009, 37 minutes) goes behind the curtain and into the studio of a Japanese dance grandmaster. Yoshie Tachibana, the third in a line of traditional dancers, lives in the center of an ancient world made up of admirers, disciples, and artisans. 
An elegant woman in a flowing silk kimono holds a pose, while flower petals gently fall around her. This is the figure of the grandmaster of traditional Japanese dance, Yoshie Tachibana. The graceful poses and gorgeous costumes are what her public fills theaters to watch.There is another side to the mysterious world of classical arts in Japan, and The Heron and the Geisha: A Life in Dance goes behind the curtain and into the studio of a Japanese dance grandmaster. Yoshie Tachibana, the third in a line of traditional dancers, lives in the center of an ancient world made up of admirers, disciples, and artisans. Her students kneel before her, taking her harsh words with stoic calm even as tears run down their cheeks. Her wigmaker, a Tokyo artisan who makes wigs for Kabuki actors, patiently smiles as she instructs him. Her kimono salesman recalls the days when even as a young girl, Iemoto Tachibana had her kimonos custom made for special occasions. Iemoto Tachibana shows what it means to be fully committed to an art form, and how after decades of practice a person becomes a dancer. Her words and her dance reveal an art form, and a view of art, that even the most dedicated connoisseurs can never get to see. (More information on this film)
Admission: $6 for the full evening, which also includes a short film program at 7pm and a feature--Hassan Ildari's dark comedy, Small Potatoes--at 8pm. For complete information on these other films, click here, scroll down to January 26 and click Film Notes.

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at Second Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Workshop: Dancing to taxim

Aszmara’s Dancing to Taxim Workshop
with master musician Souren Baronian

Saturday, January 22 (3-6pm)

Anahid Sofian Studio
29 West 15th Street, 6th Floor (between 5th and 6th Avenues), Manhattan
Clarinet, Kaval and Dooduk - these instruments cry, laugh, wail, and inspire madness! Dancing to these instruments with their specific qualities and voices are explored in this very special workshop. What a rare treat for dancers to have master musician Souren Baronian joining Aszmara as we find new ways of listening and understanding the taxim form, work on improvisational skills, connect with the musician’s voice, and to express ourselves in the emotional notes of the music.
15 participants maximum
Fee: $60. Pre-registration required. Deadline: January 20
To register: Aszmara@Aszmara.com or 914-318-8605
For full information, please click here.

Kovgan: images of Nora

Alla Kovgan: Shoemaker
Nov/Dec Journal Part III, Dance Films Association

Filmmaker Alla Kovgan talks about the making of NORA with dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire