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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sofian to launch Atelier Orientale series

Anahid Sofian announces the new Atelier Orientale, an innovative quarterly performance series of dance and performing arts of the Middle East.

Sunday June 19, 5-7pm

Anahid Sofian Studio
29 West 15th Street, 6th floor (West of Fifth Avenue), Manhattan

Donation: $20
Reservations: 212-741-2848 or by email 

A meet-the-artists wine reception will follow the performance. 
In this intimate and friendly atmosphere, Anahid Sofian offers artists an opportunity to stretch their talents and appear in works that include traditional, contemporary, works-in-progress, and experimental.
Sofian has long been recongnized as an innovator in the field of Middle Eastern dance, having brought the art to such spaces as the New York Dance Festival at the Delacorte Theater (1978), Carnegie Hall (1980), Lincoln Center (1993), Town Hall (in 1999, 2000 and 2003), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (2003).

Artists selected for the first
Atelier Orientale are:
Aszmara
Azza Amon & Dancers
Jean Musacchio
Mimi Fontana & Dancers
Nadia Maria Michaels
Sira Melikian

Anahid Sofian 
For more information about the Anahid Sofian Studio, click here.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Poets with your pie


presents

Poetry Dinner

Sunday, June 5 (7-10pm)

Four & Twenty Blackbirds
439 3rd Avenue (at 8th Street)
Gowanus, Brooklyn
F or G train to 4th Avenue/9th Street
M or R train to 9th street/4th Avenue
Four poets intimately related to dance and performance read during a three-course visual feast created by Chef Sam Richman and Four & Twenty Blackbirds.
Readings by Willa Carroll, Robert Kocik, Thom Donovan and Eva Yaa Asantewaa.
Wine generously provided by Jenny & François Selections.
Very limited space. Buy tickets early! Click here.

Gil Scott-Heron, 62

Gil Scott-Heron dies aged 62
David Sharrock, Guardian.co.uk, May 27, 2011

Gil Scott-Heron, Spoken-Word Musician, Dies at 62
The Associated Press (via The New York Times), May 27/28, 2011

Friday, May 27, 2011

Jogja Hip Hop

Jogja Hip Hop Foundation is the foremost Javanese hip hop group, melding global rhythms and traditional Javanese language into an expression simultaneously local and universal.  The group raps in Javanese--from classical verses to traditional curses, street slang and social protest messages.  Established to reflect diversity and pluralism, they create a new musical language that reaches people across cultures.
See Jogja Hip Hop Foundation at Asia Society, Saturday, May 14, 8pm. Free pre-performance lecture at 7pm.

For more information and ticketing, click here, and also listen to a two-minute excerpt from "Kulonuwun (Romantisme Zaman Underground)" from Jogja's debut album.

Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

Dances for an iPhone

Richard Daniels - Dances for an iPhone

Dances for an iPhone, created, choreographed and produced by Richard Daniels, offers an innovative way to look at and disseminate dance on camera. Mr. Daniels brings modern dance to a wider audience in this App for iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches while simultaneously creating a new category of Apps with purely cultural content.
The current dances, roughly three to five minutes in length, feature performances by Carmen de Lavallade, Deborah Jowitt, Margie Gillis, Risa Steinberg, Christine Wright and more.

For more information on this free iOS app, click here.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

DMAC offers choreography residency

DMAC (Duo Multicultural Arts Center)--at 62 East 4th Street, between 2nd Avenue and Bowery in the East Village--is offering residencies to choreographers beginning September, 2011 through August, 2012. The residencies are for choreographers to create new works. Each residency will last approximately 8 weeks. At the conclusion of the residency the choreography will be given the opportunity to showcase the work in progress before an audience.

To download the application please click here.

AUDIO PREVIEW: David Parker


Delightful dance artist David Parker talks about his new collaboration with Jeffrey Kazin--Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance--in this audio preview.


David Parker and The Bang Group 

Misters & Sisters: A Love Story in Song and Dance

Joe's Pub
at The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street
(between Fourth Street and Astor Place)
Manhattan

Thursday through Saturday, June 2-4, 7pm
Misters and Sisters, a new work by and about David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin and their performing alter egos, represents a new way of working for Parker. This show─a kind of autobiographical fiction─is inspired by and dedicated to Parker’s father, mystery novelist Robert B. Parker, whose words “Don’t look for yourself in your work, look for your work in yourself,” Parker pays homage to here. Delving into their lives together, Parker and Kazin, joined by Nic Petry and Amber Sloan, cut a swath through an array of romantic standards from the American songbook as they chronicle their life together in song and dance. Misters and Sisters includes dramaturgy by Anne Davison and musical direction by Anna Ebbeson.
Ticket information and purchase: 212-967-7555, online or in person at The Public Theater box office from 1-6pm, and at Joe’s Pub from 6-10pm daily.

a DanceNOW [NYC] presentation

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Your own site to see

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council invites you to Create Your Own Artist Website with WPFolio & WordPress, a hands-on workshop led by Michael Mandiberg, artist, designer & educator.

Workshop 1: Wednesday, May 25, 6:30-8:30pm
Workshop 2: Thursday, May 26, 6:30-8:30pm

Note: Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 are NOT SEQUENTIAL. The same workshop is being offered twice to allow for more artists to participate. 
This workshop will provide artists with the basic skills to create, update and maintain a personal website with WPFolio, a free and open source website theme on WordPress. Step-by-step instructions will be provided to install and configure a portfolio website while participants follow along on their personal laptops. At the end of this two-hour workshop, participants will be able to leave with a basic, working portfolio site, ready to be updated with future contents.
WPFolio is built by media artist Steve Lambert and a team of open source developers and designed for artists like you.
Registration and selection:
Two workshops will be offered, each accommodating 30 artists, selected by lottery. Registration for the lottery is required.
Click here for complete program information and registration.
Registration deadline: Wednesday, May 17, 11pm
Workshop is free, but participants should be prepared to incur costs for web hosting and domain name registration in order to build a site.
 For complete details and registration, click here.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Feller review: "Marie and Bruce"

Wallace Shawn's Marie and Bruce
reviewed by Deborah Feller, News and Views, DeborahFeller.com, May 8, 2011

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Stella!

I'm telling you now: If you're incapable of being mesmerized by Muna Tseng's Stella, you're dead from the neck up and the neck down. Better see to that little problem.

And if you have not seen Stella, try for tonight's wait list at the door, starting at 7:15pm.

Since Judy Hussie-Taylor took the helm at Danspace Project, glamor, humor, sensuality and ecstasy in "downtown" dance have found a friendly welcome through the creativity of her PLATFORM curators. Tseng's production, though technically not part of the PLATFORM series, feels like an extension of all that and the crown on top and quite shamelessly so. Its art installation and most of its costuming come directly from Tseng's late mother, the Stella in question, an elegant fashion plate in her day.

Entering St. Mark's sanctuary, you might think you took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at the Met's Costume Institute. Sit down and get comfortable. You're about to have an audience with a woman voted one of Shanghai's Top Ten Beauties.

Four performers--Tseng, David Thomson, Rebecca Warner and Isadora Wolf--embody Stella. Tseng, seated at one side of the space, plays a recording of narration that blends history and personal memory. Thomson, Warner and Wolf play dress-up, their makeup, wigs and cheongsams--curve-hugging, high-necked dresses diagonally zipped up under the arm--invoking the good life recreated in Hong Kong after Stella's folks fled the emergence of Communism in China. (This lifestyle would not remain affluent after the family eventually relocated to Canada, a poignant backdrop to this visual display.) Thomson's lengthy solo segment, opening with a scarily meticulous primer on the right way to set a table and serve guests, is a stunning character study--not to mention that Thomson really has the legs for that little gray dress/jacket ensemble.

The prickly toughie under Stella's polished surface comes through there as well as in a long, amusing parade of Stella-isms projected behind some of the dancing. Go figure a woman who would counsel the use of sunscreen because "you don't want to be an African mask" or who would advise you to "read Emily Bronte not Amy Tan" or slam you with "You make me cough blood." Reading these words takes us further into Tseng's engagement with her complicated inheritance from a mom who internalized values from Western culture and "polite" society. Stella/Stella is, by turns, powerfully seductive and discomfiting.

If Judy Hussie-Taylor and her curators have warmed to the idea of over-the-topness in dance, they probably never envisioned anything as over the top as what Tseng pulls off at Stella's finale--an old-school theatrical Wow! befitting the woman and even out-camping the camp of Thomson and his porcelain soup spoons and high heels. To which I can only say--to Stella and to Tseng--You go, girl!

Stella--final performance tonight at 8pm

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church
Second Avenue and Tenth Street, Manhattan
(directions)

Friday, May 6, 2011

Kushner to be vindicated?

CUNY to Consider Restoring Award to Tony Kushner
by Winnie Hu, The New York Times, May 6, 2011

See previous links on this issue here.

Town hall on dancers' wellness

Dancers' Bodies. Promoting Wellness.
Dance/NYC and the Dance/USA Taskforce on Dancer Health invite you to join us in responding to the Taskforce's recent call to action to achieve the dancer aesthetic in a manner that promotes overall good health and protects the artist and performer. Led by Richard Gibbs, M.D., the town hall provides a forum to discuss case stories from the perspective of the health professional, cultural critic and professional dancer, including New York City Ballet Principal Dancers Jenifer Ringer and Jared Angle. What words work to promote dancer wellness? What positive practices? What can we as a field do for our dancers?
Speakers: Richard Gibbs * Jared Angle * Jen Edwards * Melissa Gerson * Jenifer Ringer (For speaker bios, click here.)

Monday, May 16, 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Abrons Arts Center
Henry Street Settlement
Playhouse Theater
466 Grand Street (corner of Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map) 

RSVP here

AUDIO PREVIEW: Jody Oberfelder

Jody Oberfelder (Photo by Paula Court)



Choreographer Jody Oberfelder 
talks with Clare Cook about...
 

Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects 
and Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra
present 
The Soldier’s Tale (L’histoire du Soldat)

In presenting a fresh version of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, choreographer/director Jody Oberfelder places this post-World War I story—originally sourcing two Russian folktales—in a modern world.
     
Thursday-Saturday June 9-11, 7:30pm
(Gala: Thursday, June 9)

Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts

3 Spruce St, Manhattan
(directions)

Tickets here or 866-811-4111

Finwall premieres EVENFALL at Joyce SoHo

Alyce Finwall Dance Theater, from San Francisco, presented the world premiere of its first evening-length work last night at Joyce SoHo. A vigorously performed, if mysterious, piece for eight women, EVENFALL lasts just under an hour and will be remembered best for the atmosphere created by Andrea Williams (video) and Finwall and Joe Landini (lighting).

Inspired by the moody, betwixt/between time following sunset, EVENFALL is chock full of movement for its capable octet in a space first lit by a single light carried by one dancer drifting along within a group of her colleagues, all of them dressed in abbreviated black outfits. This cluster slowly, silently orbits a rock-still dancer dressed in pale underwear. The lantern-like light dramatically illuminates her face and body. A video projects smudgy masses flickering on either side of the space as she begins a stretchy, scrunchy solo, later joined by one and then more dancers under an elegant constellation of cherry-red lights that dangle overhead.

Such a poetic environment could call forth choreography of equal interest, with a focused purpose and development over time. However, Finwall's almost nonstop chain of movements mostly fills the 55 minutes without sufficiently articulating the movements' connection to the environment or their reason for being. I'm not sure I saw a clear investigation of "femininity, identity, innocence and nakedness" that publicity previewed, although there was an oft-repeated bit of business around swiftly stripping off pieces of the black clothing from one's partner and then each partner getting re-dressed. I saw dancers efficiently doing what they do, but I suspect there's a lot of experience encoded in Finwall's sequences that has been diluted and abstracted down to a level that, while fine to look at, may no longer be readable and meaningful to the outside eye.

One striking passage stands out from this fairly even ground. A pair of dancers face each other, make esoteric hand gestures--which one writer, reviewing an early version of EVENFALL, likened to American Sign Language--and aggressively paw at each other. This happens a couple of times, if I recall, with these two and another pair. It's rather like an animal encountering and batting away at its mirror image, thinking it's attacking prey. Now that's interesting.

With a soundscore by Carson Whitley. Dancing by Julia Hollas, Emmaly Wiederholt, Joy Prendergast, Malinda Lavelle, Kaitlin Parks, Emily Jones, Madelyn Biven and Maggie Stack 

EVENFALL continues tonight and tomorrow at 8pm.

Information and ticketing 

Joyce SoHo
155 Mercer Street (between Houston and Prince Streets), Manhattan

Directions: N/R/W to Prince, B/D/F/M to Broadway/Lafayette or 6 to Bleecker

This weekend, celebrate New York's galleries

NEW YORK GALLERY WEEK (May 6-8)
The second annual New York Gallery Week will culminate with a three day presentation of over 60 solo gallery exhibitions, along with scores of free events and programs, the majority taking place inside the galleries themselves.
For a schedule of events and more information, click here.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Intersections of race and sexuality

From Arts and Culture @ The Center

Friday, May 13, 6:30pm

Center Authors presents The Intersections of Race & Sexuality with Cris Beam, David Levithan, Malinda Lo and Jacqueline Woodson who will share their latest work and examine the intersections of race and sexuality.

Admission: $10

Complete information and ticket purchase here

The Center: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
208 West 13th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(directions)

CUNY board votes down honor for Tony Kushner

CUNY Blocks Honor for Tony Kushner
by Patrick Healy, The New York Times, May 4, 2011

Tony Kushner Responds to CUNY Board Decision
The Jewish Week, May 4, 2011

Theater Talkback: Tony Kushner and the Art of Empathy
by Ben Brantley, The New York Times, May 5, 2011

Outrage on CUNY Vote to Shelve Playwright's Award
by Sharon Otterman, The New York Times, May 5, 2011

A CUNY Trustee Expands on His View of What Is Offensive
by Jim Dwyer, The New York Times, May 5, 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Screenings of Abraham's "Wind and Tree"

Choreographer/filmmaker Abe Abraham of Abanar presents his latest work, Wind and Tree, in five showings at Tribeca Screening Room, May 15-16.

In Wind and Tree, inspired by the poem by Paul Muldoon, Abraham's camera pans and swings around a collage of interlocked bare flesh, picking up gleaming textures and small, poignant details like the star-like glint in a single, revealed eye. The body parts--we often see heads protected by arms tightly folded over them--resemble gnarled stumps of fallen trees. The excellent soundscape introduces a sense of time--the wind, vast and devastating, now a faint cry, having already passed in its rush towards other land; snapped-off limbs pounding the earth.

Abraham founded Abanar specifically for "expanding perceptions of movement through film...what the camera can both hide and reveal." He aims to control the observer's focus and experience with more precision than can be achieved through live, onstage work.

Sunday, May 15 -- 6pm, 7pm, 8pm
Monday, May 16 -- 7pm, 8pm

Tribeca Screening Room
375 Greenwich Street, Manhattan
(#1 train to Franklin Street or A, C, E to Canal Street)

$10 (Reservations: 917-658-7384 or click here to email)

It's witchcraft

Somewhere in the midst of Suzanne Bocanegra's When A Priest Marries A Witch--that video and live "artist's talk" in which actor Paul Lazar verbally channels Bocanegra while being thoroughly Paul Lazar--I felt the artificial juxtaposition of channel and channelled fall away. Standing before me, just a few feet away, was neither Bocanegra nor Lazar alone but some deep, thorough cohesion of the two, and I fell madly in love. That's a condition, I assure you, not unfamiliar with regard to Lazar, but Bocanegra, a multidisciplinary artist, is totally new to me.

Up until that moment, though, I had already been well-entertained by Bocanegra's narrative, delivered by Lazar in a shallow space before a packed and cramped but chuckling Chocolate Factory audience on closing night. Through her genial mouthpiece, Bocanegra revisited her childhood in Pasadena, TX (oil- and NASA-loving country), where the artistic youngster dreamed of coloring for a living, and surveyed a transitional time for Roman Catholics like herself (Vatican II, folk masses, singing nuns, Sr. Carita's art, the Berrigan Bros). Having been raised in the church, too--although in oil-poor, astronaut-deprived New York--I'd lived or witnessed all of Bocanegra's Catholic cultural landmarks. I knew of which she spoke and felt her a sister soul.

On the soundtrack, we could hear her actual voice, at low volume, speaking the monologue just a few beats behind Lazar's voice, but her presence also loomed large in the hour's visual and verbal imagery--First Communion (wearing pink!); first outfit bought with her own money (black satin brocade suit paired with a cowgirl hat and an old pair of white go-go boots); checking out the art and architecture of her church and bemoaning the transition from nun-habit haute couture to the more humanizing but unacceptable dowdy ugliness of post-Vatican II sartorial reform ("the biggest fashion mistake of the 20th Century").

A "Catholic Mass groupie," she found the tradition gave her, "room to space out and think your own thoughts. Nobody can bug you. You're praying!" Later, the example set by a local designer in reworking the interior of her church--again, post-Vatican II, and in ways that seriously messed up Catholic habits, not the wearable kind--taught her that "you could make art, and it could be a grown-up thing, not just a kid thing, and you didn't have to work for an oil company."

So anyway, why did Paul Lazar have to be Suzanne Bocanegra? I don't know. But I also don't know why Paul Lazar shouldn't be Suzanne Bocanegra or why anyone who has to deliver an artist's talk shouldn't hire Lazar to step in and deliver it. I'd certainly do that.

But we are talking about a person--Bocanegra, I mean--whose Web site's home page looks like this, and I kid you not:

Suzanne Bocanegra
work
info


That's it. Seriously. A page, blank except for her name in a small, black font and those two links.  Visit http://suzannebocanegra.com/ and see for yourself.

While you're there, visit this page

http://suzannebocanegra.com/priestwitch1.htm 

and check out the still from Change of Habit (1969), which appears to be a towering monument to cheesiness. It starred Elvis Presley as a doctor and Mary Tyler Moore as a nun with the hots for him, a crushing ambivalence about her vows to Jesus, and an application of false eyelashes and shadow that might work perfectly for me but for a nun...? That section of When A Priest Marries A Witch has got to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

Lord! What will The Chocolate Factory do next? Click here and find out.