Artists’ Development in Harlem Gets Final Financing
By Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Need space for dance? boo-koo!
boo-koo
a space grant program hosted by Gibney Dance Center
a space grant program hosted by Gibney Dance Center
Gibney Dance is pleased to announce a call for proposals for boo-koo, an exciting new space grant and community “give back” initiative for emerging choreographers. boo-koo is slang for the French word beaucoup, and our new space grant program is based on the belief that everyone has something they need (e.g. space to create) as well as something to offer (e.g. time and talent).
Gibney Dance Center will supply artists with 40 hours of free space to develop new work. In exchange the participating artists will “give back” by designing and implementing a special project that will serve the dance or social services communities.
TIMELINE
February 29: Application Deadline
March 1 - 15: A panel of arts and community leaders will convene to review applications
March 15: Notification
April - June: Space Grant Period – 40 hours of space awarded.
April 28: Deadline for Community Project “Giveback” Proposal Concept
June 30: Deadline for Community Project “Giveback” Project Completion
boo-koo grantees will receive 40 hours of space to be used within a three-month period. As necessary, space grant recipients will be provided with informal direction and technical assistance in developing their “give back” projects.
TO APPLY
To apply for a boo-koo space grant, please submit the following materials:
- Two Unedited Work Sample DVDs, each clearly labeled and cued to 5-minute excerpts (no promotional videos please!)
- A Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope if you would like your application materials returned.
Application must be hand-delivered or in-office (NOT postmarked) by Wednesday, February 29 at 5 pm. Late applications cannot be considered.
Please send or deliver to:
Gibney Dance Center
Attn: Michele Wilson
890 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003
Alan Lomax folk collection to be digitized, online
The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, January 30, 2012
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Erika Sheffer premieres "Russian Transport"
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| Janeane Garafalo and Morgan Spector (Photo by Serge Nivelle) |
In Russian Transport, a tale of the secrets of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family, playwright Erika Sheffer, making her Off-Broadway debut, gets a big, lucky boost from her talented ensemble.
Diana (Janeane Garafalo) anchors this Sheepsheads Bay household, playing the kind of wiry mother with eyes behind her head and a sharp remark–in English, Russian or Profane--at the ready. Basically goodnatured hubby Misha (Daniel Oreskes) runs the family business, a car service in financial decline. Teenagers Mira (Sarah Steele) and Alex (Raviv Ullman) appear bright enough but preoccupied. Mira, resistant to the controlling Diana and allergic to the badgering Alex, can’t wait to escape to an art history study program in Italy–that is, if her mother will grant permission (guess the likelihood). Alex, dreaming of his own independence, augments his Verizon sales job with a mysterious source of extra cash that no one seems to question until he offers $200 to his struggling dad (take a wild guess here, too).
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| Top: Morgan Spector and Sarah Steele Bottom: Sarah Steele and Raviv Ullman (Photos by Monique Carboni) |
Into this soap opera in the making struts Diana’s brother Boris (Morgan Spector) on serious business from the Old Country. He’s buff, tattooed and rocking the kind of easeful swagger and charisma that would signal trouble ahead to anyone paying the least bit of attention. Think the young Brando or Jack Nicholson but come back to Spector, because this actor does his own deceptively effortless job of embodying a mercurial theatrical archetype. Before long, the insecure, susceptible Mira and the striving Alex get drawn into a very dark place. I’m pretty sure that no one on either side of the invisible fourth wall could be naive enough to be surprised by the contour and contents of that place.
Like Sheffer, director Scott Elliott lucks out with this cast, particularly Garafalo’s embrace of her character's insistence on making order and ordinariness centering forces in family life. But the direction and acting only serve to illustrate paper-thin, contextless characterizations–how did these people get to be the way they are?--and a plot that takes forever just to roll up within sight of anything interesting and then simply drives off a cliff.
Russian Transport, presented by The New Group, runs through March 10 at The Acorn Theatre. For information, click here. For tickets, click here or call the box office at 212-239-6200.
The Acorn Theatre
The New Group@Theatre Row
410 West 42nd Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Camille A. Brown at The Joyce
 |
| Camille A. Brown (Photo by Matt Karas) |
If you think you've seen all Camille A. Brown has to offer, take a trip over to The Joyce Theater this weekend, and you will discover or rediscover:
- City of Rain: I had never seen this ensemble piece, premiered in 2010. It's a good look at how Brown, popular for her character-driven dances, can work an abstract concept over space, flooding her stage with the physical turbulence of an octet of continuously winding, unfurling bodies. Mora-Amina Parker, an imposing performer, is particularly effective and impressive here.
- The Evolution of A Secured Feminine: Sure you've seen this solo a million times, on and off Brown's body. But you haven't seen it the way Brown has reclaimed it in this season. Of course, it has her signature quirky timing and seamlessness, but she's dancing it even stronger these days, filling it out even more and owning it. A good thing getting better. Worth a new look.
- Mr. TOL E. RAncE: Part 1: The program notes quote Langston Hughes' reference to humor as "unconscious therapy." Brown's performers genuinely dance the hell out of this one, which is ironic since it depicts Black minstrels dancing the hell out of stuff with smiles frozen on their faces and modern-day TV dance show contestants dancing the hell out of stuff, all while a brazen MC pours on the inflammatory racial stereotyping. Same shit, different day. I should also mention Isabela Dos Santos' animation in which, through a series of unfortunate events, a hapless guy loses one body part after another until he is, finally, only a head kicked away by a soccer player. So pretty caustic humor, if humor it is, and I can't say I find it terribly therapeutic. At first, I wasn't sure what, if anything, Brown wanted us to feel, if not horror. But Brown's concluding solo, set to a melancholy piano version of "What A Wonderful World," seemed to bring it all back to the unpredictable condition of the performer, then as now. It's also simply another good chance to see what makes Brown a stunning, affecting soloist.
- The Creation: Plus 40: Yes, be there. It's Carmen de Lavallade. She dances a re-imagination of her husband Geoffrey Holder's 1972 piece, narrating and embodying the creation of the universe by a lonely god and the development of a human figure from feeble to regal. A convincing and captivating storyteller.
- Been There, Done That: The marvelously loosey-goosey Juel D. Lane and Brown romp around as a couple of performers competing with one another for the limelight and the audience's love. Fun and just short enough to not wear out its welcome.
- The Groove to Nobody's Business: Seen this nutty one lots of times, too? See it again. Everyone's wonderful in it.
Camille A. Brown at The Joyce Theater -- Today, 2pm and Sunday, 7:30pm (tickets)
8th Avenue and 19th Street, Manhattan
Rudi van Dantzig, 78
Rudi van Dantzig, Provocative Dutch Choreographer, Dies at 78
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 26, 2012
by Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times, January 26, 2012
Nicol Williamson, 75
Nicol Williamson, a Mercurial Actor, Is Dead at 75
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 25, 2012
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, January 25, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Arab contribution to Western music
presents
The Arab Contribution to Western Music
Thursday, February 9, 6pm
Without the brilliant, sophisticated music that informed the courts of Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus, European music as we know it today would be quite different. Arabic music traveled west with Jewish troubadours and took root in Moorish Spain, lecturer and author Nimet Habachy will explain during this event. Refreshments will be served.
With musical examples from both worlds performed live by Simon Shaheen, the renowned violinist and oud player, we trace the influence of music of the Arab world to Mozart's Magic Flute and The Abduction from the Seraglio.Tickets: $25 (unreserved seating)
The Bonnie J. Sacerdote Lecture Hall
Uris Center for Education
Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, Manhattan
Leichter dance: all the way live and outspoken
Shay Wafer, 651 Arts's new Executive Director, and Anna Glass, Managing Director, were on hand last evening to usher in a new season of Live & Outspoken. This popular series, presented at the Mark Morris Dance Center, features conversations between stars and innovators of the performing arts and samples of the artists' work. A magical interview between Ntozake Shange and Marc Bamuthi Joseph was one of my highlights of 2011.
Last night's session paired the richly talented Eisa Davis (playwright, singer-songwriter, actress, dancer) with dancer-choreographer Nicholas Leichter. Davis and Leichter go back a long way. When she first moved to New York, she took up residence in his basement, and they have collaborated. So it was no surprise that this conversation would be a breeze. Davis brought to it not only personal insight but fresh imagination, a real interest in discovery.
Reflecting on his club-kid period, Leichter reached back to one source of the intensity in his dancing and dance-making.
"I did it so young and so early when it was still in this dark period," he said. "I saw a lot of crazy shit, though I never did any of that. There was hysteria, but there was also a crazy amount of passion on the dance floor. Such energy. It just ignited me.
"It wasn't as segregated as it is now. It was kind of pre-hip hop and felt like what modern dance should be--a mix of a lot of things."
Leichter developed an attitude towards concert dance that was a mix of a lot of things, too--the fire and fluidity of club dancing, yes, but also the discipline of the ballet studio. A technical wiz kid himself, he says that the rigor of his training still underlies all of his work, although it might not be as overt as it used to be.
The evening's talk was interspersed with excerpts from a smokin' duet (from Twenty, Leichter's evening-length work-in-progress) that features the choreographer and a younger dancer, Bryan Strimpel. Here's a bit of Strimpel.
French Kiss (excerpt from Black Barbra) from Nicholas Leichter Dance on Vimeo.
That's all fine, but you really must see Strimpel and Leichter dance together, a collaboration that, the choreographer says, revitalized his own dancing.
Different in age (by almost twenty years), race, body type and sexual orientation, Strimpel seems to have absorbed and enhanced the qualities that have always been wildly magnetic about Leichter--an elastic body nevertheless given to delivering rapid, sharp, percussive language, the entire body as speech and gesture. Leichter mentioned that critics, admiring of his dancing, sometimes chide him for not having dancers who can replicate his abilities. I suspect that there's a subtle distinction here: It's not about having dancers who look like you and dance like you but focusing on dancers who can stand up to you. Lanky, blond Strimpel does just that, approaching his work in a dramatically sexy deadpan way, matching Leichter at every turn and then some. The results are electrifying.
Catch up with everything from Nicholas Leichter Dance here, and with 651 Arts' new season here.
Last night's session paired the richly talented Eisa Davis (playwright, singer-songwriter, actress, dancer) with dancer-choreographer Nicholas Leichter. Davis and Leichter go back a long way. When she first moved to New York, she took up residence in his basement, and they have collaborated. So it was no surprise that this conversation would be a breeze. Davis brought to it not only personal insight but fresh imagination, a real interest in discovery.
 |
| Eisa Davis (Photo by Colman Domingo) |
 |
| Nicholas Leichter |
"I did it so young and so early when it was still in this dark period," he said. "I saw a lot of crazy shit, though I never did any of that. There was hysteria, but there was also a crazy amount of passion on the dance floor. Such energy. It just ignited me.
"It wasn't as segregated as it is now. It was kind of pre-hip hop and felt like what modern dance should be--a mix of a lot of things."
Leichter developed an attitude towards concert dance that was a mix of a lot of things, too--the fire and fluidity of club dancing, yes, but also the discipline of the ballet studio. A technical wiz kid himself, he says that the rigor of his training still underlies all of his work, although it might not be as overt as it used to be.
The evening's talk was interspersed with excerpts from a smokin' duet (from Twenty, Leichter's evening-length work-in-progress) that features the choreographer and a younger dancer, Bryan Strimpel. Here's a bit of Strimpel.
French Kiss (excerpt from Black Barbra) from Nicholas Leichter Dance on Vimeo.
That's all fine, but you really must see Strimpel and Leichter dance together, a collaboration that, the choreographer says, revitalized his own dancing.
Different in age (by almost twenty years), race, body type and sexual orientation, Strimpel seems to have absorbed and enhanced the qualities that have always been wildly magnetic about Leichter--an elastic body nevertheless given to delivering rapid, sharp, percussive language, the entire body as speech and gesture. Leichter mentioned that critics, admiring of his dancing, sometimes chide him for not having dancers who can replicate his abilities. I suspect that there's a subtle distinction here: It's not about having dancers who look like you and dance like you but focusing on dancers who can stand up to you. Lanky, blond Strimpel does just that, approaching his work in a dramatically sexy deadpan way, matching Leichter at every turn and then some. The results are electrifying.
Catch up with everything from Nicholas Leichter Dance here, and with 651 Arts' new season here.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Camille A. Brown behind the scenes
Ever dream of how much fun it would be to hang out with Camille A. Brown and her dancers and watch them create a dance? Or take a custom-designed, private class with one of the hottest dancers and choreographers on the American scene? Or get a chance to go backstage and watch one of her shows from the wings?
Well, now you can do all three. A new outfit called 1000passions has an offer for you and your kids or a few of your friends.
Check it out here:
Behind the Scenes With Camille A. Brown
Dance for Children Behind the Scenes with Camille A. Brown
Well, now you can do all three. A new outfit called 1000passions has an offer for you and your kids or a few of your friends.
Check it out here:
Behind the Scenes With Camille A. Brown
Dance for Children Behind the Scenes with Camille A. Brown
Joyce Foundation award goes to Reggie Wilson
Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Reggie Wilson receive Joyce Foundation Award
by Zachary Whittenburg, Time Out Chicago, January 24, 2012
by Zachary Whittenburg, Time Out Chicago, January 24, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Ailey's Sharon Gersten Luckman will step down
Sharon Gersten Luckman. Photo by Paul Kolnik
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater announced today that longtime Executive Director, Sharon Gersten Luckman, will step down in 2013 to pursue new endeavors.
Joining the Ailey organization in 1992 as Director of Development, Luckman assumed the role of Executive Director in 1995. Under her leadership, the organization has enjoyed unprecedented advancement in all aspects of its operations--from its world-renowned performance troupe, now under the artistic direction of choreographer Robert Battle, to its extensive dance training and community programs, and the opening of its state-of-the-art headquarters, The Joan Weill Center for Dance, in 2005.
“I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work side by side with the superb staff and brilliant dancers of the Ailey organization, with two magnificent Artistic Directors, Judith Jamison and Robert Battle, with our wonderful Associate Artistic Director Masazumi Chaya, and with a deeply dedicated Board of Trustees under the invaluable leadership of Joan Weill,” Sharon Luckman stated. “At Ailey, we often speak of ourselves as a family. I am very proud of what my family has accomplished over these past decades—and although I will now be moving on to other endeavors, I know I will always feel I’m a part of Ailey.”
In consultation with Luckman, the Board of Trustees will begin an international search for a successor to be named in early 2013.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Randy Gener: A criticism without borders
In Search of a Criticism without Borders
by Randy Gener
from Critics on Criticism, Critical Stages: The IATC webjournal, October 31, 2010
by Randy Gener
from Critics on Criticism, Critical Stages: The IATC webjournal, October 31, 2010
“Randy Gener...argues that criticism of international theatre activity needs to be given greater visibility and needs to be supported and more effectively diffused and promoted.”
RANDY GENER is a writer, editor, critic, playwright and visual artist in New York City. He is the 2009 winner of the George Jean Nathan Award, the highest accolade for dramatic criticism in the United States, for his essays in American Theatre magazine, where he works as the senior editor. He won a 2010 Deadline Club Award from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for “shedding light into censorship and repression of the arts.” He was named Journalist of the Year 2010 by the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Jewelle Gomez set to bring new play to NYC
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| Jewelle Gomez (Photo by Diane Saben) |
The Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project of TOSOS
will present
A staged reading of Waiting for Giovanni
Written by Jewelle Gomez
(writer, activist, and author of the double LAMBDA Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories)
Directed by Mark Finley
Saturday, January 28, 7pm
Waiting for Giovanni is Jewelle Gomez's imaginative, funny, and moving dream play about author James Baldwin, as he grapples with emotional and professional obstacles to completing his landmark 1956 novel, Giovanni's Room. The cast includes K. Todd Freeman (Song of Jacob Zulu, The Brother/Sister Plays) as James Baldwin, and Desiree Burch (52 Man Pickup, Tarbaby) as Lorraine Hansberry. The play was originally staged at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theater Center (Ed Decker, Artistic Director).Ripley-Grier Studios
Studio 16T
520 Eighth Avenue, (between 36th and 37th Streets)
(directions)
Free and open to the public. No reservations required.
Reelabilities film festival and Heidi Latsky Dance
February 9-14
ReelAbilities: NY Disabilities Film Festival is the largest festival in the country dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities. Initiated in New York in 2007, the festival presents award winning films by and about people with disabilities in multiple locations throughout each hosting city. Post-screening discussions and other engaging programs bring together the community to explore, discuss, embrace, and celebrate the diversity of our shared human experience.Schedule information and ticketing
Festival trailer
HEIDI LATSKY DANCE
a performance for Reelabilities
free and open to the public
Saturday, February 11, 2pm -- The JCC in Manhattan
Monday, February 14, 4pm -- 115th Street New York Public Library
Pushing her physically integrated work beyond conventional boundaries, Heidi Latsky offers a preview of Somewhere. Wildly different renditions of "Over the Rainbow," a song so easily misconstrued in the context of disability, propel a celebration of physical virtuosity, movement, invention and the sheer joy of dancing. Also included will be an excerpt from work-in-progress SOLO COUNTERSOLO featuring original music by Chris Brierley. Performance will be followed by a discussion with the artists.
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
ReelAbilities strives for inclusion of all people. Individuals needing accommodations to participate should contact the screening venue directly at least two weeks in advance of the event.ASL interpretation, CART, Live Audio Description, and information in Braille are available upon advance request. All films are captioned or subtitled and all venues are wheelchair accessible.
Conversing with film critic J. Hoberman
"MANOHLA DARGIS In one of Jonas Mekas’s first columns for The Voice he wrote that 'every breaking away from the conventional, dead, official cinema is a healthy sign.' There was an activist element to his rhetoric, and soon after he started writing for The Voice he decided that it wasn’t enough to be a critic, he had to become, as he put it, a near-midwife, so he could hold and protect 'all the beautiful things that I saw happening in cinema and that were either butchered or ignored by my colleague writers and by the public.' He was fighting, to borrow the title of a book on him, to free the cinema."J. Hoberman Talks About Village Voice and Film Culture
by Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott, The New York Times, January 20, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
Annie Lanzillotto and Lori Goldston
 |
| Annie Lanzillotto. Photo (c)Carolina Kroon |
Voices Building
presents
Annie Lanzillotto and Lori Goldston
a duet between poet/performance artist Annie Lanzillotto and cellist Lori Goldston
$10 suggested donation at the door
Saint Ann and The Holy Trinity Church
157 Montague Street (corner of Clinton Street), Brooklyn
By subway: 2/3, 4/5, and R to Borough Hall / Court Street
This landmarked Gothic Revival church in Brooklyn Heights, renowned for its stained glass windows, opened its doors in 1847, and has become a community commons where faith, arts, and culture meet.
Lori Goldston's life as a cellist, composer, arranger, improvisor, collaborator and listener, leads far and wide through genres and eras, moving heedlessly across borders and disciplines. She is a member of the experimental rock band Earth, and co-founder of the Black Cat Orchestra and Spectratone International. She lives in Seattle. In 1993 -1994, Lori was the touring cellist for Nirvana, and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York.
Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a New York based writer, poet and performance artist. Her first book, working title, L Is For Lion: Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir is due out from SUNY Albany press this year. She reads and performs from second book of poems, Schist Songs. Available on iTunes are Annie Lanzillotto Band's rock and blues CD Blue Pill, and her poetry Eleven Recitations. She's a 2012 Franklin Furnace Award recipient, and has performed The Flat Earth: Wheredddafffhuck Did New York Go at Dixon Place, How To Wake Up a Marine In A Foxhole at The Kitchen, and a'Schapett at The Arthur Avenue Retail Market in the Bronx. Lanzillotto and Goldston have collaborated before, including tracks on Blue Pill and live at Smalls Jazz Club, in New York.
Into the woods with Keely Garfield
"To Be Clear:," dancer-choreographer Keely Garfield writes in her program notes, "Twin Pines is presented in two parts--Stump and Flesh--presented consecutively and without an intermission because one thing leads to another..."
One fairly vivid, if incomprehensible, thing does lead to another in this surreal, Zen-ish ramble through an Inner Forest crowded with tree stumps, charged gestures, old pop songs moodily altered by harmonium drones, Kabuki theatrics, and a "bowl of cherries" life that we shouldn't take too serious because it is mysterious. I'm going to leave the oddball mystery of Twin Pines to your discovery; the curious, multilayered contents of Garfield's head are quite a lot to unpack. But a few things really brightened the hour for me last evening at Danspace Project.
I find myself resisting the strained, tight-spring look of Garfield's own dancing--it tells the tale, for sure, if perhaps too well--but I deeply enjoy how she seizes on simple objects and visual ideas the way a child might grab whatever's laying around at home and magically turn these modest items into ambitious theater. As a fantasist, she could not have a better crew of mindful collaborators than her lighting designer, Kathy Kaufmann, her fellow dancers, Anthony Phillips, Brandin Steffensen and Omagbitse Omagbeni, and the quietly enchanting folk singer-songwriter Matthew Brookshire, described on Beaconpass.com as "somewhere between a ukelele-playing Jeff Buckley and a sober Shane McGowan."
Watch for a wonderfully-crafted duet of unison dancing between Phillips and Steffensen and another beautifully-performed duet between Omagbeni and Steffensen that introduces air and buoyancy at the moment that the dance greatly needs some spaciousness.
Twin Pines continues at Danspace Project tonight and Saturday evening at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.
Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)
One fairly vivid, if incomprehensible, thing does lead to another in this surreal, Zen-ish ramble through an Inner Forest crowded with tree stumps, charged gestures, old pop songs moodily altered by harmonium drones, Kabuki theatrics, and a "bowl of cherries" life that we shouldn't take too serious because it is mysterious. I'm going to leave the oddball mystery of Twin Pines to your discovery; the curious, multilayered contents of Garfield's head are quite a lot to unpack. But a few things really brightened the hour for me last evening at Danspace Project.
I find myself resisting the strained, tight-spring look of Garfield's own dancing--it tells the tale, for sure, if perhaps too well--but I deeply enjoy how she seizes on simple objects and visual ideas the way a child might grab whatever's laying around at home and magically turn these modest items into ambitious theater. As a fantasist, she could not have a better crew of mindful collaborators than her lighting designer, Kathy Kaufmann, her fellow dancers, Anthony Phillips, Brandin Steffensen and Omagbitse Omagbeni, and the quietly enchanting folk singer-songwriter Matthew Brookshire, described on Beaconpass.com as "somewhere between a ukelele-playing Jeff Buckley and a sober Shane McGowan."
Watch for a wonderfully-crafted duet of unison dancing between Phillips and Steffensen and another beautifully-performed duet between Omagbeni and Steffensen that introduces air and buoyancy at the moment that the dance greatly needs some spaciousness.
Twin Pines continues at Danspace Project tonight and Saturday evening at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.
Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)
Thursday, January 19, 2012
CDWNM: Towards the future of dance writing
The new Collective for Dance Writing and New Media seeks to connect dance writers with one another and with our allies across disciplines in the arts and technology. We form these bonds to address longstanding needs in the service of experienced, emerging and prospective dance writers.
If you are a dance writer, a dance artist or a professional in an allied or supporting field who cares about the current conditions and future of dance reportage, documentation, criticism and creative expression, please join us for our next general meeting:
Monday, February 6 (6pm-7:45pm) at Gibney Dance Center, 890 Broadway, 5th Floor, Studio 6.
For further information, contact Eva Yaa Asantewaa via message on Facebook.
If you are a dance writer, a dance artist or a professional in an allied or supporting field who cares about the current conditions and future of dance reportage, documentation, criticism and creative expression, please join us for our next general meeting:
Monday, February 6 (6pm-7:45pm) at Gibney Dance Center, 890 Broadway, 5th Floor, Studio 6.
For further information, contact Eva Yaa Asantewaa via message on Facebook.
Young Jean Lee and the naked truth
Untitled Feminist Show--created by award-winning director Young Jean Lee, choreographer Faye Driscoll, associate director Morgan Gould and other collaborators--has earned a place on my mental list of favorite dance events of the very young 2012. I know I'm going to have some explaining to do because--as I see here in Lee's program notes--Lee doesn't consider this work to be a dance piece. "Like the performers themselves," she writes, "the show is meant to resist categorization."
So, what am I talking about?
Well, aside from the fact that I would like to be able to claim every damn good thing in the Universe for dance, I'm beginning to get a sense that calling something "theater" (as she calls her company, after all: Young Jean Lee's Theater Company) is fine and dandy, but calling something "dance" is somehow limiting.
Hmmm....
Seems it was just yesterday that the idea of calling all sorts of wild and crazy (or mild and boring) things "dance" was bold and liberating.
In any case, Lee's six marvelous stars are performing arts of the body, including dance and some incredibly edgy mime, and they are stark naked throughout the hour. I'm calling this one for dance, and I will not be dissuaded.
I also hear tell--because I've been reading some of her interviews--that she doesn't want Untitled Feminist Show to be considered sexy. Oh, please. Nothing wrong with (or un-feminist about) sexy. Bring sexy back. In fact, this show does so--directly and indirectly.
What couldn't be genuinely sexy about six unselfconsciously nude, female-bodied performers, each with a distinct body type and size, defining themselves across a fluid gender spectrum and expressing, almost entirely in iconic and primal physical movement, how it might feel to be free?
Free is sexy.
They are Becca Blackwell, World Famous *BOB*, Amelia Zirin-Brown (aka Lady Rizo), Hilary Clark, Katy Pyle and Regina Rocke, collectively hailing from cabaret, theater, dance and burlesque with some crossovers, all stripped of theatricalizing makeup, hairstyling and, of course, costumes. They make a fabulous team in this fabulous romp, but Blackwell, Zirin-Brown and especially Clark seem to be having the most high-charged and, yes, liberating fun.
Some of them initially enter the space by slowly drifting down the aisles, giving the audience a sense of being represented in the performance space. (They come from us.) We hear their soft and human breathing, which establishes a comforting sense of common humanity. But don't get too comfortable. Although the inhabitants of Lee's feminist utopia sometimes sport frilly pink parasols, they're capable of using these items as weapons, and they'll happily consume their victim. No, you've never seen Marcel Marceau do the kind of mime you'll see in Untitled Feminist Show--at least, not on Ed Sullivan's show.
And check out that acid-trip video projection at the end! Through the Looking Glass, through the black hole you go! What are you going to be when you come out the other side?
With scenic design by David Evans Morris; lighting design by Raquel Davis; sound design by Chris Giarmo and Jamie McElhinney; and projection design by Leah Gelpe.
Untitled Feminist Show is a presentation of Performance Space 122's COIL Festival and runs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center through February 4. For information, schedule and ticketing, click here.
Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan
"Dance Legacies" on film
from Sand directed by Cari Ann Shim Sham
(USA, 2010; 10 min)
The hour-long Dance Legacies program, a lesser-known gem of this year's Dance on Camera Festival, will present a spectrum of short-film topics--from Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's re-staging of her 1988 work, Shelter, in the wake of New Orleans' Katrina crisis to a look at the vaudeville tradition of sand dancing with father-and-son tappers Darrow Igus and Kenji Igus. The directors of all five films will be on hand to introduce their work.
Dance Legacies screenings are scheduled for January 30 and January 31 at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. For more information on this program, click here. To purchase tickets, click your selected date under "Showtimes" (left-hand column).
Dance on Camera is a presentation of Dance Films Association and co-sponsored by The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Dance on Camera
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street (between Amsterdam and Broadway), Manhattan
(map/directions)
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
NY Times obituary for Niles Ford
Niles Ford, Dancer and Choreographer, Dies at 52
by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, January 17, 2011
See memorial information here.
by Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times, January 17, 2011
See memorial information here.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Tweeting the night away?
Hollis Bartlett of the DanceIntuit blog invites you to join in on the next Dance (Twitter) Party.
Here's his post, and here's more information on how to jump in and join the #LetsTalkDance Tweetchat, every Monday night, 10-11pm EST.
Here's his post, and here's more information on how to jump in and join the #LetsTalkDance Tweetchat, every Monday night, 10-11pm EST.
Dance critic Tobi Tobias remembers Bill Como
Admittedly, Bill and I were an odd match. We must have disagreed about three-quarters of the issues that came our way. Our artistic taste was light years apart. Just for instance, he was a Béjart guy; I was a Balanchine gal. (Need any more be said?)
-- Tobi Tobias on Dance Magazine's Bill ComoBeginning in the dynamic 1970s, Tobi Tobias was my first review editor at Dance Magazine at the launch of my professional writing career and, along with Burt Supree at The Village Voice, eagerly sent me out on a million quests for what's interesting in dance across all kinds of traditions and techniques. (So, now you know who to thank--or blame, perhaps--as I do.) Here's a spot-on, gorgeous blog post about the start of her own dance writing career and her working relationship with Bill Como, the magazine's editor-in-chief from 1970-1988, who died in January 1989.
The Boss: Personal Indulgences No. 21
by Tobi Tobias, Seeing Things, ArtsJournal.com, January 16, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Time for a dance interlude with Gilles Jobin
The Moebius Strip (2001, 26 min. video)
by Gilles Jobin
For more "innovation in motion" from dance-tech.tv, click here.
by Gilles Jobin
A sensual, fluid, hypnotic exploration of a “human sculpture”: the bodies of five dancers pass, cross, follow, intertwine with each other. A video of dance, adaptation of Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin’s The Moebius Strip,created at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris during the spring of 2001.Presented by dance-tech.tv.
For more "innovation in motion" from dance-tech.tv, click here.
Dance folks are talking...or should be
APAP Preview: Ten Things the Dance Field Should Be Talking About in 2012
by Marc Kirschner, TenduTV, January 5, 2012
by Marc Kirschner, TenduTV, January 5, 2012
In memoriam: Niles Ford [UPDATE]
This weekend, the dance community was shocked and saddened to learn of the sudden death of dancer-choreographer Niles Ford (Niles Ford/Urban Dance Collective) who passed away in his sleep.
Ford was scheduled to present the world premiere of Summer of Hate/15 Steps at FLICfest--an annual dance festival of "feature-length independent choreography" at Fort Greene's Irondale Center--on Friday, January 27, 9pm. Dancer-choreographer Gabri Christa, a longtime friend and collaborator, announced on Facebook that that program will go forward as planned and will be followed by a video tribute to Ford and a dance party with DJ. Admission to that evening's performance will be free.
Here is some information about the new work:
My heart goes out to Ford's family, his dancers and his many friends and colleagues in dance who loved him dearly.
FLICfest
The Irondale Center
85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)
For more information on FLICfest programming and ticketing, click here.
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| Niles Ford |
Ford was scheduled to present the world premiere of Summer of Hate/15 Steps at FLICfest--an annual dance festival of "feature-length independent choreography" at Fort Greene's Irondale Center--on Friday, January 27, 9pm. Dancer-choreographer Gabri Christa, a longtime friend and collaborator, announced on Facebook that that program will go forward as planned and will be followed by a video tribute to Ford and a dance party with DJ. Admission to that evening's performance will be free.
Here is some information about the new work:
Summer of Hate/15 Steps investigates the events and ideas that emerged during the summer of 2010 around President Barack Obama, the media, and conversations about race. Focusing on the “Facebook Generation,” the work explores the energy of the younger generation that voted for Obama, and their use of technology to be active and engaged within society. Summer of Hate/15 Steps is performed by Katie Balton, Stephanie Booth, Edwardo Brito, Stephesha David, Jessica Parks, Laura Rekuc, Cara Robino, Michelle Siegel, Nabowire "Nabz" Stokes, and Royce Zackery. Costumes are by Cheryl McCarron.On Saturday, January 28, 2-5pm, there will be a memorial gathering, also at Irondale Center with musical tributes, video and time to speak. The organizers invite you to "...bring kids, food and drinks."
My heart goes out to Ford's family, his dancers and his many friends and colleagues in dance who loved him dearly.
FLICfest
The Irondale Center
85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn
(map/directions)
For more information on FLICfest programming and ticketing, click here.